Concepts in Confocal Microscopy Web Resources
Web Articles
3-D Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy
Authored by Dr. Lance Ladic of the Department of Physiology at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), this website offers limited tutorials, links to other confocal websites, meeting announcements, and tips for microscopists.
Autofluorescence Imaging of Living Cells
This page is a portion of an on-line Master's thesis (, 1995) written by John Marelius (Uppsala University School of Engineering, and the Paul Scherrer Institute, University of Zurich, Switzerland). For a moderately detailed explanation of the principles of confocal microscopy, this is a good place to start.
Confocal Club
Housed at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the website offers a number of features of interest to microscopists. Included are links to other confocal sites, a membership directory, confocal users directory, notices of seminars, courses, interesting links, and a gallery of confocal images.
Confocal Imaging
Developed by the Laboratory for Optical and Computational Instrumentation at the University of Wisconsin, this website provides an introduction to confocal imaging and a variety of related topics.
Confocal Microscopy
Sponsored by the Experimental Pathology Core at the University of Arizona Center for Toxicology, this website offers links to general and historical aspects of confocal microscopy. Additional avenues to sources of information on confocal principles, theory, and optics are also provided.
From Bones to Atoms: Imaging Nature Across Dimensions
Written by scientists from the M.E. Müller Institute for Microscopy at the University of Basel (Switzerland), this website offers introductory information about optical sectioning using confocal microscopy techniques. Also presented in a nicely-executed format is information about video-enhanced light microscopy, scanning probe microscopy, electron microscopy, electron diffraction, and digital imaging.
Olympus America
The Olympus FluoView is a point-scanning, point-detection, confocal laser scanning microscope for biology research applications. Excellent resolution, efficiency of excitation, intuitive user interface and affordability are key characteristics of the Olympus FluoView. The system is available with the IX70 inverted research microscope and the AX70, BX50, BX60 and BX50WI upright research microscopes.
Optiscan
The Personal Confocal microscope offers a twin detection system utilizing both argon-ion and krypton-argon lasers for simultaneous fluorescence imaging. The microscope is controlled by the Confocal Control software and images can be analyzed with Analyze, a Windows-based program.
Scanning Laser Microscopy Laboratory (University of Waterloo)
Sponsored by the Physics Department at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, this website presents a brief introduction to the basics of scanning confocal microscopy.
University of Manchester Confocal Microscopy Facility
A division of the Biological Sciences Department, the Confocal Facility website provides information about the basics of confocal microscopy including volume data, animation, double labeling, and image processing.