Leica Microsystems: Leica Science Lab

Science Lab

The knowledge portal of Leica Microsystems offers scientific research and teaching material on the subjects of microscopy. The content is designed to support beginners, experienced practitioners and scientists alike in their everyday work and experiments. Explore interactive tutorials and application notes, discover the basics of microscopy as well as high-end technologies – become part of the Science Lab community and share your expertise!

Image of MDCK (Madin-Darby canine kidney) cells taken with phase contrast.

Phase Contrast and Microscopy

This article explains phase contrast, an optical microscopy technique, which reveals fine details of unstained, transparent specimens that are difficult to see with common brightfield illumination.

Tumor resection leveraging 5-ALA fluorescence. Image courtesy of Dr. Carla Reizinho.

Surgical Management of High-Grade Gliomas

Learn about the surgical management of high-grade gliomas and how to expand the extent of resection intra-operatively using tools such as 5-ALA fluorescence.

How to Radically Simplify Workflows in Your Imaging Facility

VIDEO ON DEMAND - How to radically simplify imaging workflows and generate meaningful results with less time and effort using a highly automated microscope that unites widefield and confocal imaging.

Immersion Objectives

How an immersion objective, which has a liquid medium between it and the specimen being observed, helps increase the numerical aperture and microscope resolution is explained in this article.

8-year-old child in an oncology hospital is fighting the disease cancer. Picture copyright: AdobeStock_817771788

Advancing Surgery in Pediatric Brain Tumors

Learn how fluorescence-guided surgery supports pediatric brain tumor resection and improves precision through literature review and clinical cases.

Phase-contrast image of a MDCK-cell culture and its respective confluency measured by the Mateo TL microscope.

How to Determine Cell Confluency with a Digital Microscope

This article shows how to measure cell confluency in an easy and consistent way with Mateo TL, increasing confidence in downstream experiments.

Microscope image of cultured cells at the bottom of a dish.

How to do a Proper Cell Culture Quick Check

In order to successfully work with mammalian cell lines, they must be grown under controlled conditions and require their own specific growth medium. In addition, to guarantee consistency their growth…

Intensity distribution (arbitrary color coding) of an image of two points where the distance between them corresponds to the Rayleigh criterion.

Microscope Resolution: Concepts, Factors and Calculation

This article explains in simple terms microscope resolution concepts, like the Airy disc, Abbe diffraction limit, Rayleigh criterion, and full width half max (FWHM). It also discusses the history.

Five-color FLIM-STED with One Depletion Laser

Webinar on five-color STED with a single depletion laser and fluorescence lifetime phasor separation.