Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © Microscopy Society of America, 2007. This article is posted here by permission of Cambridge University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Microscopy and Microanalysis 13 Suppl. 2 (2007): 10-11, doi:10.1017/S1431927607075186.
Description:
Differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy is widely used to observe structure and motion
in unstained, transparent living cells and isolated organelles, producing a monochromatic shadowcast
image of optical phase gradient. Polarized light microscopy (Pol) reveals structural anisotropy
due to form birefringence, intrinsic birefringence, stress birefringence, etc. DIC and Pol
complement each other as, for example, in a live dividing cell, the DIC image will clearly show the
chromosomes while the Pol image will depict the distribution of the birefringent microtubules in the
spindle. Both methods, however, have the same shortcomings: they require the proper orientation of
a specimen in relation to the optical system in order to achieve best results.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
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