China's first spinning disc confocal system – Airy Nova-SD grand release

On June 18, at the "Webinar on Confocal Microscopy Technology and Applications" held by Instrument Information Network, AiryTech released China's first spinning disc confocal system Nova-SD.

Confocal microscopy is one of the important tools in life sciences, providing powerful optical sectioning capabilities that allow users to see the internal structures of cells and tissues. Confocal microscopy systems can be divided into two categories: point scanning and spinning disc. Compared to point scan confocal, spinning disc confocal utilizes multiple focal points for parallel scanning, enabling high-speed, large-field, high-throughput confocal imaging.

Since its inception, this technology has been monopolized by foreign manufacturers. According to the survey of "Instrument Information Network", our country has more than 4 billion yuan of confocal systems [1], but only one point scanning confocal system is a domestic system, and there are no self-developed spinning disc confocal products in China. Due to the high technical barrier, this system is only available to a few international instrument companies.

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Figure 1 Comparison of double spinning discs (left) and single spinning discs (right). The dual spinning disc focuses the laser onto the pinhole array through an upper microlens array, but this process limits the size and thickness of the dichroic lens, thereby limiting the field of view size and image quality.

In order to break this situation, AiryTech has conducted a series of original research. They found that the current monopoly on the market is the dual spinning disc confocal, which is due to the "sandwich" form of a layer of microlens array + a layer of corresponding pinhole array to direct excitation light into the pinhole. However, this process not only limits the size and thickness of the dichroic mirror sandwiched in the middle, limits the field of view and resolution, and is prone to mismatch of the double disk holes, which is inconvenient for users (Figure 1). After carefully analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of single and double spinning discs, the project team decisively chose the solution of a single spinning disc to compensate for the focusing effect of the microlens array by increasing the excitation of optical power, to realize the "three highs and one large" spinning disc confocal system Nova SD with high speed, high resolution, high three-dimensional layer cutting ability and large field of view. The system has the characteristics of multi-color, fast, easy to use and worry-free, bringing users fully automated and cost-effective products. At the meeting, Professor Peng Xi of Peking University introduced the design principle of the product, and Gang Wang, Sales Director of AiryTech, introduced the imaging application of the spinning disc confocal product in multiple life science fields. Dr. Hu Zhao from Beijing Brain Research Institute, as a product internal test user, also spoke highly of the confocal product in terms of imaging quality and flexible customization.

The advent of Nova-SD fills the gap of domestic spinning disc confocal products. Not only that, the system can also be combined with the company's self-developed Polar-SIM polarized structured light microscope, MagiCube live cell culture system, QuadImage imaging separator and other product combinations to provide flexible solutions for different life science application scenarios.

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Fig. 2 The Ara-SD spinning disc confocal system is used in combination with Polar-SIM and QuadImage image splitter.

Video link to the press conference:https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1jogdeBETX/?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0

https://www.instrument.com.cn/news/20211111/597363.shtml