Welcome to the Nikon Imaging Center at the University of Heidelberg
December 2023
Three major changes will happen soon: the Nikon AX point scanning confocal will get an additional N-SPARC detector in March 2024 improving the resolution and the SNR of the system.
Also in that month we will get an Nikon Ti2 equipped with a Yokogawa W1 spinning disk unit. Compared to the X1 scanhead, the W1 will show a 4 times wider field with all the advantages of this technique: lower phototoxicity, lower photobleaching, faster imaage acquisition.
Last not least a Nikon N-STORM microscope will add to our superreslution systems.
July 2022
Our own Nikon AX confocal with 6 laser lines has now been installed can can be used by our users. The old C2 has left us. The AX is equipped with 2 silicone oil objectives (25x NA 1.05 and 40x NA 1.25), which make the microscope particularly suitable for scanning thick tissue sections or organoids.
December 2021
While Nikon has provided us with a demo unit of a brand new AX confocal that features tunable filters, resonant 2x2k scanning, and on the fly A.I.-driven denoising, delivery of our own AX unit is unfortunately delayed. The reasons lie in the supply chain problems currently prevailing as a result of Corona and the tense political situation.
December 2020
Nikon has set up a new microscope: the Ti-Crest. It's a Ti2-Microscope with a X-Light V3 spinning disk unit from CrestOptics, combined with a 7 lines laser unit.
November 2019
The TIRF microscope has been added the OrtoSplit II dual emission image splitter. It allows to take one or two images on a single camera. Here it is an Andor Xyla 4.2 camera with a peak quantum efficiency of 82% and 4.2 megapixels of 6.5 x 6.5 µm size.
August 2019
The Ti2-TuCam system has received a Nikon automatic water dispenser (controlled by the NIS-Elements software), allowing to run long-time experiments with water immersion objectives.April - December 2019
Bit by bit - and without any problems - we have upgraded our Nikon microscope stations from Windows 7 to Windows 10 LTSC after the support for Windows 7 expires in January 2020. Only the PerkinElmer spinning disk systems still require Windows 7, but will receive extended support from Microsoft, initially for 2020.
April 2019
Now available: the InviSPIM from Luxendo, our second lightsheet microscope. In contrast to the UltraMicroscope II the InviSPIM is made for live imaging of smaller specimen like small embryos or organoids.
October 11, 2018
The TuCam system was updated today and offers an additional device: A Nikon DMD (digital micromirror device) for photoactivation and photoconversion experiments.
August 15, 2017
The old "Tadpole" server running the Huygens deconvolution software has now retired. The new, much more powerful server nicknamed "BamBam" (2 Xeon CPUs with 10 cores each, 1TB RAM) is now available.
August 2017
Our LaVision Ultramicroscope II SPIM (selective plane illumination microscope aka light sheet microscope) has now startet to become operational. We're still struggeling with some teething problems but these will be solved soon.
The new workstation with a 10 core Intel i7 CPU, 128 GByte RAM and GPU acceleration with 4 NVIDIA GeForce Titan X (Pascal) 12 GByte graphic cards running Arivis Vision 4D is also operational. Such a powerful computer is necessary to cope with the immense amount of data that a SPIM microscope produces.
March 2017
Nikon has started to replace several of our Ti microscopes by the brand-new follow-up model, the Ti2. There are a lot of new features, more sensors in the microscope and an outstanding new motorized stage and an even more perfect Perfect Focus System (PFS; focus stabilizer for long term imaging) of the 4th generation.
In room U15 our new LaVision SPIM microscope is beeing installed. Therefore the Ni-E widefield microscope was moved to room U36.
January 2017
The A1R confocal is now equipped with a time domain FLIM/FCS system from PicoQuant.
November 2016
Thanks to Nikon the A1R confocal got a new laserbox with 6 lines in total: 405, 440, 488, 515, 561 and 640nm. Also, the detectors were replaced: 2 new PMTs for the DAPI/far red channels and 2 GaAsP detectors for the red/green channels.
March 2015
The Ti-HCS system has a new environmental box from OkoLab: It has its own CO2 control (no sharing with the A1 any more) and of course offers temperature control. Dark panels prevent room light from entering the box. The box is much easier to operate than its predecessor.
October 21, 2014
On the AZ100 and the Ni-E microscope the new Nikon cameras, DS-Qi2 (b/w) and DS-Ri2 (color), with huge 24x36mm CMOS chips were installed.
July 16, 2014
The computers on the C2 confocal, the Ni-E, the TIRF, the BioStation and the AZ100 as well as one of the Analysis-Stations were replaced by new ones.
June 20, 2014
The entire hardware (i.e. scan head, detectors, controller) of the C2 plus confocal as well as all the lasers were replaced.
June 12, 2014
The SMZ1000 was replaced by a new SMZ1270. It offers two objectives: a Plan Apo 0.75x with a working distance of 10.7 cm and a ED Plan 2x with a working distance of 3.5 cm. The zoom ranges from 0.63 to 8. There's place for up to 4 fluorescent filter cubes.
November 06, 2013
The AZ100 as well as its b/w-camera (DS-Qi1Mc) was replaced by a new one. There's a new LED-brightfield lamp (Schott KL 2500 LED) that does not change its color temperature with intensity.
November 05, 2013
On the A1 station the microscope was replaced by a new one, equipped with the Perfect Focus System 3 (PFS3) with extended capabilities. Also, all objectives were replaced by new ones.
October 28, 2013
On the A1 station the argon laser was replaced by a 491nm and a 515nm solid state laser.
September 19, 2013
On the A1 station the old HP workstation was replaced by a state-of-the-art HP Z820 model.
August 08, 2013
On the C2 station the microscope was replaced by a new one, equipped with the Perfect Focus System 3 (PFS3) with extended capabilities.
June 24, 2013
The entire microscopic hardware of the TIRF system was replaced by brand new components (new microscope, new optics, new laserbox, new TIRF arm). The system is now offering the Perfect Focus System 3 (PFS3).
June 04, 2013:
The old BioStation IM was replaced by the new BioStation IMQ. The new model offers a more flexible sample chamber and is equipped with the much more sensitive Nikon DS-Qi1Mc black and white camera.
May 2013, 2013:
Instead of the SMZ 1500 a brand new SMZ 1000 is now available for sample preparation purposes.
