Waite Campus, Adelaide University, officially opened a multi-photon microscope this week. The microscope offers researchers in SA a non-invasive way to examine living tissue and intact cells without having to destroy them.
Up until now, tissues have been killed, then frozen or embedded in blocks of paraffin and sliced much thinner than paper for microscopic inspection. The multi-photon microscope is a specialised fluorescence microscope consisting of a computer operated laser and a conventional fluorescence microscope, also computer operated. The laser produces rapid pulses of long wavelength red light, creating images of biological material by showing up those structures inside cells that fluoresce under light.
