| Scanning Probe Microscope |
| Scanning Probe Microscope |
M62 Controls University of Wisconsin Laser Scanning Microscope System Company Profile The Laboratory for Optical and Computational Instrumentation (LOCI) is a Biophotonics Instrumentation laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The LOCI laboratory is an interdisciplinary group with a common unifying interest: the development and application of optical-based techniques to biomedical research. End-Product Overview Laser-scanning microscopes using confocal, and more recently multiphoton, optical sectioning techniques have established themselves as indispensable tools for a wide range of biological research disciplines such as cell, neuro and developmental biology. Concomitantly with these developments, a variety of experimental laser microbeam techniques have become established as powerful tools in the experimental biologist's arsenal. For the past few years, the LOCI lab has been developing an optical workstation that combines the functionality of a laser-scanning microscope with a laser microbeam system. This system has proved to be a valuable research tool. The one weakness of the system is that it used software and scan control electronics that were adapted from a commercial laser-scanning microscope and thus were incapable of controlling both the imaging and laser microbeam components together. Described below is an integrated firmware system based on latest generation digital signal processors that allows full control the scanning system of the optical workstation and will allow full software control of the laser-scanning system and the laser microbeam. 
Time points from a 4-D data set of C. elegans embryonic development taken on the Optical Workstation. The figure above demonstrates the utitility of having a microscope system that integrates bot the imaging and laser microsbeam components. A C. elegans embryo has been permeabilized at the beginning of an experiment by puncturing the eggshell with a laser microbeam. A fluorescent membrane probe in the bathing medium (FM4-64) then enters the embryo and labels all the plasma membranes. This figure shows selected frames from a 4-D, multiphoton data set. The upper two rows show two different focal planes (out of a total of 30 at each time-point) and the lower row shows a projection of all focal planes. The time-interval between columns is 75 minutes. Figure courtesy of Bill Mohler Application Description We were able to design our own, purpose-designed system without developing special purpose hardware by using a very high-speed, general purpose, DSP the TMS 320C6201 incorporated into the Innovative M62 board to control all our hardware. This Innovative M62 features two Omnibus ports into which can be plugged a variety of input/output subsystems. We are using a four channel DAC card (DAC40) in one port and a four channel ADC (AD40) card in the other. The DAC card is used by the DSP to generate the scan waveforms for the laser-scanning microscope and also for providing the X and Y coordinates for the laser microbeam. The ADC card is used to capture up to 2 channels of signal data derived from the photodetectors of the laser-scanning microscope. The main M62 DSP card, along with the piggy-backed daughter cards, plugs in to the PCI bus of a standard Windows/Intel personal computer. 
Block diagram depicting the DSP system that we are using to develop an integrated control system for the Optical Workstation. Product Benefits · Speed and Performance · Flexibility afforded by the Omnibus sub-system · Software and Firmware infrastructure provided by Innovative · Technical Support |
