Monday, June 23 – Thursday, June 26, 2025

Cost: $200 for TAMU; $350 Other Universities; $500 Industry

This short course covers the principles of optical microscopy with emphasis on fluorescence microscopy techniques.  Intended for those who are starting with fluorescence imaging as well as those who have experience but feel that they need better understanding of the techniques.  

Topics:  Image formation, limits of resolution; Principles of fluorescence; Microscope objectives and their performance; Cameras and detectors;  Fluorescence dyes and  proteins; Fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM), FRET, FRAP, FCS. Mounting media and aberrations, optical clearing. Deconvolution; Optical sectioning: confocal, lightsheet, multiphoton microscopy. Superresolution microscopy. Image processing and analysis.

Lectures/Presentations:

• Principles of image formation; What is resolution
• Principles of fluorescence; Fluorescence dyes, markers and proteins
• Hardware: Filters, Light Sources, Microscope objectives and their performance
• Aberrations and how to avoid them for best results
• Cameras and detectors
• Deconvolution
• Optical sectioning: Confocal, Lightsheet, Multiphoton microscopy
• Superresolution microscopy
• FLIM, FRET, FRAP, RICS,

Practical, hands-on/Demonstration sessions

• Upright and Inverted wide-field Fluorescence Microscopes: multi-channel, Z-stack, Time-lapse and image stitching
• Wide-field vs. Confocal imaging
• CMOS/sCMOS monochrome and color cameras
• Autoquant and Leica Lightning Deconvolution
• Leica SP8 Confocal/FLIM/STED Superresolution System
• Zeiss Z1 Lightsheet microscope
• Nikon AXR Point-Scanning Confocal microscope
• Nikon nSPARC confocal superresolution microscope

COURSE PROGRAM AND SCHEDULE: 2025-06-FMSC_outline.pdf