Mobile Microscopes Look inside the Brain

摘要

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tubingen have now developed a mobile laser scanning microscope that is so small that it can be mounted on the head of a rat. Very light in weight and only about three centimeters in size, the microscope uses a highenergy pulsed laser and fiber optics in order to observe several fluorescent cells in the brain simultaneously. It also fixes the exact position of the animal, which can move about at will.