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WG 1 – Illumination power

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WG 1 – Objectives

Comparison of fluorescence intensities between images requires measurements of the illumination power and stability of the excitation light source. WG1 aims at establishing a recommended protocol for measuring the stability of a light source during both short- and long-term image acquisition sessions using calibrated external power sensors. This initial aim will be extended later to measure the absolute flux of light through the illumination path and irradiance of the sample. The initial protocol will be designed around lasers on confocal microscopy platforms (raster scanning and spinning disks). It will be later modified towards other microscopy techniques (widefield, TIRF, light-sheet, super-resolution).

WG 1 – Co-Chairs

WG 1 - Latest News

 

Last meeting: 7th May 2025, 2:15 pm

Release of protocol “Illumination power and illumination stability measurements for contocal, widefield and multiphoton microscopes“. 

Beside step-by-step instructions, the protocol provides:

  1. Automation
    • Aims: The QUAREP-LiMi power and stability assessment protocol requires long and repetitive measurements for each light source as other parameters are tested. The aim of this subgroup is to provide feasible means for carrying out these processes, taking advantage of the automation capabilities of modern microscopes.
    • Co-leads: Mišo Mitkovski, Nasser Darwish
    • On-going tasks:
    • Cloud storage location (can be accessed as a member) → here
  2. Environment
  3. Glossary
  4. Power Meter

12th Meeting, 6th of October 2021

Meeting summary

We reviewed the new introduction section, providing context, purpose and objectives for the laser power stability protocol. We also discussed laser safety, alternative protocols and the results section. For the results, the majority highly recommended to not present at once all the results we gathered (we don’t believe we have a representative sample yet), but preferably to provide typical examples of data, show how it should be analyzed, presented and communicated. We also proposed to include a template. We discussed laser warm-up and proposed to include an appendix of example data for different systems. Finally, we also reviewed briefly our appendices.

Meeting documentation

11th Meeting, 1st of September 2021

Meeting summary

We spent the meeting reviewing the edits and comments everyone made in the first two pages of the main document. Amongst other things, we discussed adding more specificity to the goal of this protocol in the introduction, proposed to emphasize Laser Safety remarks with bold text, references and symbols, to add a CAD file of Roland’s holder, and write system specific instructions to the appendix section. A Zotero group library has been created and link sent to all (please communicate with Nathalie if you need help including a reference).

Meeting documentation

Subgroup Automation, 3rd meeting, 1st of July 2021

Meeting date

01/07/2021 @ 4:00 PM (CET/CEST)

Meeting documentation

10th meeting, 2nd of June 2021

Meeting summary

We reviewed comments in the main document, discussing comments and suggestions and adding tips on safety, environmental conditions, and type of laser used. We also discussed the potential damages a laser can cause to an objective, the difference in laser power measurements obtained from different laser power meter brands/sensors and the effect of temperature on your measurements. The subgroups “Automation” and “Powermeter” reported briefly their progress.

Meeting documentation

9th meeting, 5th of May 2021

Meeting summary

We reviewed comments in the main document, discussed discrepancy between measurements made with different power meter models on the same microscope and same laser, commented different graphs to display all measurements made by the group in their respective labs so far, to help define what a “stable” behavior is. We decided to set up a Zotero shared library for reference articles. The automation sub-group presented the project of a GitHub repository for scripts.

Meeting documentation

Subgroup Automation, 2nd meeting, 13th of April 2021

Meeting date

13/04/2022 @ 4:00 PM (CET/CEST)

Meeting documentation

8th meeting, 7th of April 2021

Meeting documentation

Subgroup Automation, 1st meeting, 17th of March 2021

Meeting date

17/03/2021 @ 4:00 PM (CET/CEST)

Meeting documentation

7th meeting, 3rd of March 2021

Meeting documentation

6th meeting, 3rd of February 2020

Meeting documentation

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Quality Assessment and Reproducibility for Instruments & Images in Light Microscopy

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