Courtesy of TILL Photonics

Rainer Uhl, CEO of Gräfelfing, Germany-based TILL Photonics http://www.till-photonics.com, laments that while the field of microscopy has evolved dramatically over the last century, the classical light microscope itself has not. New applications such as confocal and multiphoton microscopy were adapted to the microscopes rather than vice versa, placing constraints on the user.

Uhl and colleagues, in cooperation with the BioImaging Zentrum of the University of Munich, adopted a different approach, redesigning the tool to fit the method. "We said, let's take all the known applications together, distill the essence of what microscopy is or will be, and try to design something which reduces the microscope to its essential, the objective," says Uhl. TILL's designers therefore placed the objective in the middle of the device, maximizing the optical path's accessibility.

The result is the iMIC, a motorized, automation-ready, octagonal platform with a central objective lens and...