THE MULTITALENTED MULTISPLIT GOES INTO MULTIDEPTH MODE!

Jez and Gareth have just been demonstrating the multidepth imaging potentialities of our new fourway “Multisplit” image splitter to a potential customer in Oxford, and we’re pleased to say that it came through with flying colours!  Except of course that in this application the image splitting isn’t on the basis of colour.  Instead the splitting is performed in an entirely neutral way by simple beamsplitters, so that the four images are nominally identical.  However, the individual imaging channels have corrector lenses (or “spectacle lenses” if you will) that slightly change the focus of each one, so that they are observing correspondingly different depths into the preparation.  As we’ve said all too often before, this is particularly useful if your sample is still sufficiently alive as to be actually moving (it does happen occasionally), as the four depths are being imaged at the same time, giving an instant mini-z stack.  We’ve already explained the theory of this in a technical article that you can find on our website here, together with a handy spreadsheet that allows you to choose the best corrector lenses for your particular application.  However, this latest demo provides proof (if any were needed) that this technique, which we’ve already pioneered with our twoway and threeway splitters, can now be successfully applied two four simultaneous depths!