Andor Technology, an Oxford Instruments company, has introduced Dragonfly, a high-speed confocal imaging platform supporting multiple high-contrast imaging techniques. Dragonfly integrates Andor’s cameras with patented illumination technologies and optimised optical design to deliver high image quality: characterised by low noise, wide dynamic range, high resolution and high sensitivity. The Borealis Perfect Illumination Delivery system used for confocal and widefield imaging provides stability, uniformity and spectral range extending into the NIR region, where autofluorescence can be largely avoided.
Up to twenty times faster than conventional confocal microscopes, Dragonfly is a highly productive imaging platform which provides superior spatial and temporal resolution, often revealing previously undetected information in microscopic specimens.
Dragonfly is designed to provide fast and sharp imaging of a wide range of specimens including bacteria, single molecules at the cell membrane, embryos, organoids and fixed and acute tissue sections. Confocal illumination by hundreds of microbeams minimises photobleaching and protects from phototoxicity, essential for successful live cell experiments. Dragonfly’s laser widefield imaging is integrated with GPU-accelerated deconvolution, to embrace yeast and other thin specimen imaging, to reveal high contrast and resolution at very low exposure levels.
The Dragonfly hardware platform has been developed alongside a new software suite named Fusion. Fusion is designed for ease-of-use and high performance, reducing the complexity of instrument control and simplifying acquisition. Intimately aware of multi-dimensional data, Fusion enables real-time volumetric image rendering to provide instant feedback of specimen health, imaging conditions and spatial relationships of key features within specimens. Fusion’s GPU-accelerated deconvolution, running at least 10x faster than conventional processing, offers iterative algorithms which enhance contrast as well as lateral and axial resolution in laser widefield, confocal and TIRF imaging. Deconvolution can be integrated with the acquisition protocols so that results are available with minimal delay and users avoid time consuming data transfer steps.