The Max Planck Society and the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) have granted permission to PicoQuant to use gated stimulated emission depletion (gSTED) microscopy technology in its new time-resolved confocal microscope. By using gated STED, an improvement on the STED technique which won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014, users are able to acquire images with a better contrast and resolution.
Stephen Hell, director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, developed the gated STED technique in order to further improve the resolution and contrast of a STED microscope, while reducing laser intensity. This increases photostability as well as live cell capability, therefore extending the range of possible applications.
gSTED relies on a photon gating technique that can be directly applied on the data acquired with PicoQuant’s new microscope, the MicroTime 200 STED, to acquire images of a better quality.
‘We are very pleased to work together with the Max Planck Society, its technology transfer organisation Max Planck Innovation, and the DKFZ that allows us to put a new STED microscope on the market,’ said Rainer Erdmann, managing director of PicoQuant. ‘The gSTED technology is surely one of the key capabilities of the MicroTime 200 STED that users will appreciate in their research.’
Professor Stephen Hell added: ‘I am very happy that PicoQuant helps to make the STED and gSTED technology accessible to more laboratories around the world. The user friendly design of the MicroTime 200 STED allows scientists without a background in physics to perform STED routinely in their research.’
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