About these Written Materials

Our handouts are written with local users from the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center (or the Arizona Health Sciences Center) in mind. Some of these handouts originally appeared in this Core's regular (5x per year) newsletter.

Some of the material here will be useful to others from outside the University of Arizona who may have similar equipment. We cannot answer specific support questions from outside the SWEHSC. Please be aware that your instrument may have slightly different software or hardware than ours and that the rules for what users are allowed to do on any specific piece of equipment vary widely.

The handouts are available in the Adobe Acrobat™ PDF file format . The size of the file will be indicated in parenthesis next to the handout's name. The free Acrobat reader software is available at Adobe's web site and runs on PC operating systems, the Macintosh OS, Linux, several versions of Unix and OS/2. Click on the Adobe graphic to obtain the latest version of the software.

Fair use: Individuals are welcome to print copies of these handouts for their personal use. Any other use of these materials requires permission (contact information is available at the bottom of this page).

Tutorials and General Information

These handouts are tutorials on specific topics or provide information of a more general nature. These handouts should be of interest to anyone interested in microscopy or digital imaging.

General
Basic Microscope Alignment - Mar 2002 An introduction to aligning a light microscope for Koeller illumination.		2 pages (180 kb)
Light Microscopy Tips  - Jul 2004, minor revision Oct 2004 A collection of tips, including information about: Recommended coverslip thickness, Coverslip mounting media, Don’t mix immersion oils from different vendors, Mixing and matching microscope objectives, and Cleaning Microscope Objectives.		4 pages (199 kb)
Formaldehyde Fixatives - 1994, revised Apr 2004 Background information on formaldehyde, optimal fixation suggestions and safety information.		3 pages (154 kb)
Digital Imaging
Digital Imaging Ethics - Feb 2001, significantly revised in Sept 2004 and May 2007 An overview of the issues related to digital image ethics. Includes a list of twelve guidelines for editing digital images in an ethical and scientific manner.		6 pages (152 kb)
Potentially the most dangerous dialog box in Adobe Photoshop™ - Feb 2002 Tips and warnings about the Image Size dialog box in Photoshop™.		1 page (117 kb)
Using the Histogram Tool - Jul 2000 Understanding this often overlooked tool that is found in most image analysis/editing programs.		1 page (90 kb)

Instrument or University of Arizona-specific Handouts

These handouts are specific to one of the instruments available in this Core or contain information that is geared toward University of Arizona affiliated persons.

General
Contact information for affiliated imaging facilities - updated Oct 2005 Names, phone, www, and email information for the people responsible for the major pieces of equipment/service labs affiliated with the SWEHSC Cellular Imaging Core.		1 page (77 kb)
Light Microscope Vendors for Southern Arizona - updated October 2007 Names and contact information for the local service and sales representatives for Leica, Nikon, Olympus and Zeiss. In addition, two local firms (UA Stores vendors) for microscope service and repair are featured.		1 page (87 kb)
Compix Image Analysis Workstations
Color Image Capture - AZCC Image Analysis Workstation - Oct 22, 2004 Instructions for capturing color digital images using the attached brightfield microscope.		5 pages (267 kb)
Zeiss LSM 510NLO-Meta
Installing the Zeiss LSM Image Browser Software - updated Sept 2005 Instructions for installing this free software on a Windows™ PC.		2 pages (107 kb)
Information about installing the Zeiss LSM Image Browser software on a Macintosh computer - Oct 2002 While this software is not designed to run on Macintosh computers, it can be done with emulation software.		1 page (104 kb)
Zeiss LSM Image Browser Software - Sept 2002 Instructions on how to use this software. Important information about exporting files from the proprietary LSM format to other image file formats.		6 pages (345 kb)