Confocal Microscopy Tutorials/Information
• Olympus Fluoview Resource Center.
• Confocal ListServ archives.
Fluorescence Spectral Data/Explorers
• Texas A&M Microscopy Center's list of fluorochromes well-suited to their Fluoview 1000 (it has nearly the same lasers as we do). Also provides some information on mounting media.
• Olympus Fluorochrome Selection Table.
• Boswell/McNamara Fluorescence Spectral Explorer.
• BD Biosciences Fluorescence Spectral Viewer.
Image Processing/Analysis: Software
• Olympus Confocal Image Viewer. A free program (Windows XP required) that will open Olympus proprietary file formats (e.g., .oib), and allows you to save them in other formats. You need our serial #, which is on the whiteboard in the confocal room.
• ImageJ. Any platform. This is an extremely useful free program capable of many things, including (with the appropriate plugins) opening Olympus .oib /.oif files. It can do many image processing and analysis functions, as well. A version with a collection of microscopy-related plugins is available from the McMaster University Biophotonics Facility site.
• List of commercial and free software. List maintained by an Italian group.
Image Processing/Analysis: Protocols and Guidelines
• Advice on pseudocoloring images.
• Primer on quantitative colocalization analyses, from the Olympus Fluoview Resource Center. A variety of software packages, including the Fluoview software, can do these calculations.
• Ethical issues in image processing. This site provides some general guidelines, and links to other articles on this topic. A second site, at the University of Alabama Birmingham, has more extensive descriptions of the same guidelines and potential problems. A search of the confocal listserv archives also reveals lots of discussion on this topic.
