Specialized Products

N-STORM

10x Resolution of the optical microscope

Enabling clearer observation of tissues and cells, STORM technology is an advanced form of optical microscopy – one of the most widely used imaging methods in biomedical research. However, the spatial resolution of optical microscopy, classically limited by the diffraction of light to several hundred nanometres, is substantially larger than typical molecular length scales in cells, leaving many biological investigations beyond the reach of light microscopy. To overcome this limit, a new form of high resolution light microscopy, STORM, was developed in the laboratory of Dr. Xiaowei Zhuang, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Professor of Physics at Harvard University. STORM uses photo-switchable fluorescent probes to temporally separate the otherwise spatially overlapping images of individual molecules, allowing the construction of super resolution images. Using this concept, two- and three-dimensional, multicolour fluorescence images of molecular complexes, cells and tissues with a few tens of nanometres resolution have been achieved. This new form of fluorescence microscopy allows molecular interactions in cells and cell-cell interactions in tissues to be imaged at the nanometre scale.

Providing dramatically enhanced resolution that is 10 times or better than that of conventional optical microscopes, N-STORM is based on the world renowned Nikon Eclipse Ti research inverted microscope. The system incorporates CFI60 objectives featuring high numerical apertures developed using unique optical design, coatings and manufacturing techniques. The N-STORM instrumentation will be capable of multi-spectral two-dimensional and three-dimensional nanoscopy, with lateral resolution to approximately 20nm and axial resolution to approximately 50nm, extending the role of the optical microscope to near molecular level resolution.

The new STORM technology constructs high resolution fluorescence images (2D and 3D) by overlaying single molecule images from localisation information of fluorophores detected with high accuracy and calculated from multiple exposures. It generates much more information from detection of single molecule fluorescence emissions and goes one step further, from structural to molecular understanding of the specimen. The N-STORM Super Resolution microscope system will not only provide high-resolution two-dimensional image acquisition capability, but with the addition of a 3D optical device switchover built in the microscope, it will also acquire multicolour high resolution fluorescence images of the same specimen in 3D, without the need for time consuming serial section acquisition.

Download brochure: N-SIM & N- STORM.pdf