Optical microscopes are still second to none when it comes to analyzing biological samples. However, their low resolution, improved only in recent years in STED microscopes, continues to be a problem.

Microscopy continues to transform the life sciences. Here are five recent breakthroughs made possible by the technique.

Researchers have shown that consumer-grade 3D printers and low-cost materials can be used to produce multi-element optical ...

This protocol outlines a procedure for collecting and analyzing point spread functions (PSFs). It describes how to prepare fluorescent microsphere samples, set up a confocal microscope to properly ...

A new type of super-resolution optical microscopy takes a high-resolution image (at right) of graphite "nanoplatelets" about 100 nanometers wide. The imaging system, called saturated transient ...

Example of super-resolution microscopy: The image shows how the Discrete Molecular Imaging (DMI) technology visualizes densely packed individual targets that are just 5 nanometer apart from each other ...

Researchers at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) have developed an innovative microscopy ...

Researchers at MIT have reported a method they’ve developed for generating very high-resolution tissue sample images. The technique is also much cheaper than tools that provide similar results.

Using a tiny, spherical glass lens sandwiched between two brass plates, the 17th-century Dutch microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the first to officially describe red blood cells and sperm cells ...

Researchers have developed a way to make extremely high-resolution images of tissue samples, at a fraction of the cost of other techniques with similar resolution. Known as iterative expansion ...

Electron microscopy has allowed scientists to see individual atoms, but even at that resolution not everything is clear. A team of researchers from both Cornell and the University of Chicago have ...