Raman Spectroscopy

Epifluorescence

Epifluorescence imaging is widely used within biological fields for visualisation of cell/tissue materials, but does not offer the detailed molecular information that Raman can provide. Combining the two techniques on a single microscope system allows fast location of regions of interest within biological samples and targeted chemical analysis.  Experiments such as FISH (fluorescence in-situ hybridisation) are routinely possible on such systems, allowing them to be combined with Raman chemical analysis.

The HORIBA Scientific Raman-Epifluorescence configuration includes:

  • high powered Xenon/Mercury illumination sources
  • filter cubes with high throughput, high contrast excitation/emission filters for all common fluorophore dyes
  • monochrome or RGB peltier cooled integrated CCD camera (with optional NIR optimisation)
  • dedicated epifluorescence software for image acquisition and manipulation
Optical (left) and epifluorescence (right) images of single bacteria cells. The fluorescence is produced by FITC (green), Cy3 (red) and Cy5 (blue) fluorescence dyes.
Data courtesy of Prof. Andrew Whiteley (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Oxford, UK) and Dr Wei Huang (University of Sheffield, UK).