The Microscopy Unit is composed of 3 Subunits:

A) Optical Microscopy and Fluorescent Microscopy Subunit. It is consisted of:

A Carl Zeiss research Microscope equipped with capabilities of optical microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, digital image capturing and image analysis (Grant by Bodosakis Foundation, 2001). The microscope is also equipped with the necessary accessories such as objective lenses, UV light source and fluorescence filters.

A Nikon DS-5M Digital camera attached to the microscope equipped with a DS-5M camera control unit (6.3-inch LCD monitor). This system supports capturing live images with high digital analysis.

B) Stereoscopy Subunit. It includes an Olympus Stereoscope equipped with a digital Zeiss MC80DX camera for digital capturing of images.

C) Confocal Microscopy Subunit (A.U.Th. Research Grant code #4902). It is held in collaboration with the Laboratory of Pathology (Director: Prof. G. Karkavelas) and is composed of:

A Nikon D-Eclipse C1 Confocal Microscope equipped with 3 fluorescence channels attached to a Nikon Eclipse TE 2000-U Inverted Microscope (the system supports Bright-field (BF) microscopy, Phase-contrast (Ph) microscopy and Episcopic fluorescent (Epi-fl) microscopy).

A series of Objective lenses: 1) 10x/0.25 Nikon Plan Ph1 DL, 2) 20x/0.40 Nikon Plan Ph1 DL, 3) 40x/0.65 Nikon Plan Ph2 DL, 4) 40x/0.75 Nikon Plan Fluor DICM/N2 and 5) 60x/1.4 Nikon VC.

A Digital Camera System composed of a Digital Sight DS-5M Nikon Camera and a DS-5M camera control unit (6.3-inch LCD monitor).

A series of Fluorescence Dichroic Filter Cubes (NIKON, for visual inspection): a DAPI filter (360 nm excitation, 460/50 nm emission), a FITC filter (480/30 nm excitation, 535/40 nm emission) and a Rhodamine filter (BP 540/25 nm excitation, 620/60 nm emission).

3 Laser Lines (for Confocal scanning): a 488 nm Argon ion laser at 30 mW, a 543 nm Helium-Neon laser at 1mW and a 633 nm Helium-Neon laser at 15mW.

The system is supported and controlled by a Hewlett-Packard computer running under Microsoft Windows XP Professional and equipped with a Hewlett-Packard LCD Monitor (HP LP206520’’). The Microscope is controlled by the EZ-C1 ver. 3.30 Control software for C1 Confocal Microscope and image analysis is further supported by the EZ-C1 viewer software.