Thank you for visiting Phase Contrast Microscope, the online store for high quality PCM equipment.  We carry several models of phase capable systems, including basic units, more advanced phase contast microscopes, as well as inverted tissue culture microscopes with the phase contrast microscopy built in.  Phase contrast microscopy is an illumination technique that increases the viewing magnification over standard brightfield microscopy.  Often, living cellular tissues and biological specimens are translucent, and the typical transmitted illumination of a brightfield microscope simply shows the outline only of the specimen without and viewing contrast. 

When light passes from one medium to another, of a different refractive index, the light waves refract and and light wave phase changes.  Even minute microscopic cellular material is enough to constitute a change of medium, and therefore change in light wave phase.  Phase contrast microscopy is able to detect this light phase shift and view it as a change in light contrast. 

The end result is that features of living biological specimens are now seen with greater viewing contrast.  This technique allows the live, natural state of the specimen, without unnatural staining and dyes to be introduced to the specimen.  Please contact us today about how we can meet your needs for a phase contrast microscope.  We have skilled microscopists avalible to discuss your particular application and make a professional recommendation.

If you want to view every single detail of a living cell then you have to choose your equipment very carefully. And there’s no other equipment that does it better than a phase contrast microscope. This equipment utilizes a special viewing technique that translates a shift in light wave phase to a shift in intensity, and thus visible contrast. This technique started in the year 1930’s when it was invented by a Dutch physicist Fritz Zernike, who became a Nobel Prize recipient for physics in 1953 for his invention of the phase contrast microscope.

This extraordinary invention permits the study of internal cell structure without the need to stain and thus kill the cells and now phase contrast microscopy is a mode available on most advance light microscopes. By the use of the phase contrast, researchers can now see otherwise invisible structures found within the cell body, an invaluable technique when photographing or filming living cells in action. What is so amazing with this method is that it can enhance the destructive interference of the light passing through the specimen and medium. This contrast enhancing optical technique are used to produce high contrast images of transparent specimens, such as living cells, thin tissue slices, microorganisms, lithographic patterns, latex dispersions, fibers glass fragments, and that includes nuclei and other organelles.

In effect, this technique employs an optical mechanism to translate minute variations in phase into corresponding changes in amplitude, which can be visualize as differences in image contrast. Studies shows that one of the major advantages of phase contrast microscopy is that living cells can be examined in their natural state without previously being killed, fixed, and stained. Using this, the dynamics of ongoing biological processes can be observed and recorded in high contrast with sharp clarity to minute specimen detail.

The instant impact on biological research by Zernike’s development of phase contrast optical theory was significant and the widespread application of this technique continues to the present day. An excellent example of how research results from a highly specialized field of theoretical physics can yield innovative new developments in seemingly unrelated disciplines, such as biology and medicine.

Phase contrast microscopes nowadays are used for wide variety of microscopy applications such as clinical and diagnosis of health conditions, molecular and cellular biology research, dog breeding, horse breeding, animal breeding, living tissue culture viewing, microbiological research, infertility treatments, analysis of spermatozoa in semen, sperm cell motility, sperm count, sperm morphology, mold and mildew detection and abatement, mold spore count, environmental air pollution monitoring, asbestos testing, dust mite control, and more other applications. So surf up and get yourself connected.