Comment by helsinkiandrew
5 years ago
Isn't that a digital microscope? I thought an optical microscope would be one that just uses lenses and eyepieces to magnify and show the images to one or more eyes.
Maybe I've missed something. It looks cool - but I'm not sure I understand what the purpose of OpenFlexure is from reading the website, what does it do that an old fashioned optical/mechanical microscope doesn't (or one with a digital eyepiece)? Is this meant to find things automatically?
"Flexture" refers to the type of mechanism that moves the sample stage relative to the objective lens. It means that instead of a high precision rack-and-pinion gear system that moves the stage, it uses "flexure joints" which don't necessarily need to be precision machined (they can be 3D printed).
In a flexture mechanism you apply force to a flexible bar and, because of geometry, that displacement gets translated and reduced into a much smaller displacement somewhere else. It only works with very small displacements (thus fine for microscopy). If you want to position the sample large distances, you just need to move the sample.
It's a neat idea made inexpensive by 3D printing, but the major expense here will be the optics (the objective lens). To get decent pictures of cells, like in a textbook, you're talking about $1K minimum, and it can go much higher, into the 10's, depending on application, performance and other optics (the light source and it's lenses).
Is it possible to use software to post process those images, apply a deconvolution filter and correct the optics?
Might that enable the use of cheaper lenses?
Unfortunately you can't recover information that was never captured, which is the main issue with cheaper lenses. They tend to have more abberations [1], which prevents capturing high quality information.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_aberration
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No, a very good Chinese made RMS objective can cost less than $25 at lower magnification. Plan Achromatic objectives cost a little more, but will give flatter, clearer images than cheaper ones.
It seems a tube lens is used anyway, so the advantages of infinity system objectives are not as obvious. I’d stick to DIN160 or so called Olympus compatible objectives.
You'd be surprised at what you can accomplish with a couple hundred dollar plan achromat objective. (Though OpenFlexure's design complicates the use of immersion oil...)
Why are these kinds of lenses so expensive?
Thanks, that makes more sense!
"Optical" when talking about microscopes means it's using visible light rather than, say, electrons.
The main value of this is a low-cost precision positioning system that can be 3d-printed. A lot of the challenge of microscopy is getting the sample into the right place. And yes, this design can be motorised and controlled automatically as well.