Laboratory for electron microscopy

SEM and TEM analysis

The laboratory for electron microscopy is fully equipped for both Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopic analyses (SEM and TEM respectively):

• TEM analyses produce images that have higher magnification and greater resolution.
• SEM analyses produce three-dimensional images which provide more information about the shape of features and location of features relative to each other.  Both biological and non-biological samples can be analysed with a SEM, in either low or high vacuum mode, using either secondary of back-scattered electrons.

For these analysis methods both paraffin and frozen sections can be made. These sections can be stained using routine staining protocols (e.g. dichrome staining such as haematoxylin-eosin, trichrome staining such as Masson staining,...) but more often, an immunohistochemical staining is applied, allowing the visualisation of a particular molecule/structure.

Equipment

The following equipment and software are present in this laboratory and can be rented (reservation and training required):

• Three-headed Discussion Light Microscope (OLYMPUS, BX53)
• Fully motorized Fluorescence Microscope (OLYMPUS, BX61) with high resolution Camera (OLYMPUS, DP73)
• Stereo Microscope (OLYMPUS, SZX7) with Camera (OLYMPUS, SC100)
• Inverted Microscope (OLYMPUS, CKX41) with Camera (OLYMPUS, SC50)
• CellSens Dimension software (Olympus) (image analysis)
• Stepanizer software (stereology)
• Amira software (3-D reconstruction)

Additionally, all kind of on-demand services can be performed, from simple embedding tissue into paraffin to complete microscopic analysis (from tissue to qualitative or quantitative result).