IMAGE-PROCESSING IN VIDEO MICROSCOPY

The technique called Video Microscopy has become very popular in the field of biomedical research, in such areas as the study of the behavior of calcium ion in single cells. The video microscopy utilizes advantages of both the light microscope and the video camera. There are two typical methods in video microscopy, one of them being Video Enhanced contrast microscopy (VEC) and the other, Video Intensified microscopy (VIM). The VEC technique is being used to visualize specimens far beneath the resolution limits of the optical microscope, such as the observation of moving particles along the single microtubule, the behavior of the microtubules in mitosis and the observation of colloidal gold (5 nm in size) in the living cell. VIM technique is a useful and powerful method used to observe or quantitize features under limited light conditions such as fluorescence, bioluminescence and chemiluminescence. The typical application is to study the cytosolic free Ca concentrations in a living cell with a fluorescence microscope. Photon counting imaging (under the ultra-low light level, it had better count photons individually rather than measure the amplitude of the light) is finding applications in biological research to detect chemiluminescence and bioluminescence. This technique provides a means of directly visualizing gene expression in single cells, imaging metabolites in tumor tissue and visualizing the chemiluminescence associated with oxidative metabolism in phagocytic cells. It is clear that VEC and VIM techniques are very promising methods in biomedical research.