The University of Sydney has joined with technology company IATIA to develop a Centre of Excellence for Quantitative Phase Microscopy.
The facility, to be launched on Thursday 1 August, will be of benefit to the community of microscopy users by providing access to state of the art techniques and know-how.
In the development, the IATIA phase imaging facility will allow the phase of transmitted light to be visualised and quantified for the first time.
The system extracts phase information from images by taking pictures at a series of different focal positions. The current application is available in optical microscopy where it can replace traditional techniques such as phase contrast by their computed equivalents. It thus enables details of totally transparent objects to be distinguished.
It goes further by actually quantifying this information so that thickness or refractive index can be measured, which is not possible with conventional optical techniques.
Of particular interest is the extension of the technique for electron microscope images. In conjunction with well-established x-ray analytical techniques, this could offer an order of magnitude improvement in the accuracy of analyses done on thin sections in the transmission electron microscope.
The University of Sydney team at the Australian Key Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis will work on the application and development of the system.
