The excitation source consist of Light Emitting Diodes (LED's). LED's have high stability and are very durable and therefore the lifetime of the light source is virtually infinitely.
The excitation filter removes all wavelengths from the excitation light except the green light which illuminates the sample.
The emission filter lets only the red fluorescence light pass.
Both filters are made as hard-coated interference filters, which have a high durability and excellent blocking properties for the light to be suppressed.
The red fluorescence light from the particles in the sample is focused onto the detector (CCD camera). The optical imaging system is made of identical lenses and both lenses are fastened securely.
One of the key features of the NucleoCounter is the low magnification of the microscope. The effect of the low magnification is the large area of the sample which is represented in each image.
The section which is blown-up in the figure illustrates approximately the field of view in traditional microscopy methods. The effect of low magnification is clearly visible in the limited spatial representation of each cell, which only expands few pixels.
