Optical microscopy for Biomedical Sciences

The following topics are treated:

• Fluorescence theory, labels and labeling
• Basic optics and anatomy of a microscope
• Brightfield microscopy, darkfield microscopy, phase contrast microscopy, (quantitative) olarized light microscopy, differential interference contrast microscopy,
• Epifluorescence, confocal microscopy, total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy
• Super-resolution microscopy
• Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching, Förster energy resonance transfer, fluorescence (cross) correlation spectroscopy, fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy

The course provides an overview of optical microscopy techniques that are commonly used in biomedical sciences, offering to the students the theoretical knowledge necessary to understand such techniques as well as practical knowledge about their implementation into research projects in the field of biomedical engineering.
After completion of this course a student can:
Describe the physical principles of the different methods of optical microscopy
Explain the advantages and disadvantages of the discussed techniques
Choose the most suitable microscopy technique for a given scientific problem
Plan, execute, and analyse a microscopy experiment