If you are one of the many people who are currently considering the purchase of a confocal microscope, you may be asking yourself, "How can 1 be sure that the microscope I choose is the right one?"
Before proceeding, take a step back. Ask yourself: "Why use a confocal?" A confocal microscope is, by definition, a microscope which optically "slices" the sample by showing only those details which
... [Show full abstract] are at or near the plane of focus. This results in a clearer image than might be possible with a conventional (also called "wide-field") fluorescence microscope - a microscope in which every pixel in every image is corrupted by light from its neighbors. The optical slicing of the sample done by the confocal microscope lets you construct a 3-D representation of the sample that can be very useful for image visualization or analysis.