Carl Zeiss licenses LED fluorescence excitation system to address cell biology

August 8, 2008 -- CoolLED Ltd. (Andover, UK) has announced a licensing agreement with Carl Zeiss MicroImaging GmbH (Jena, Germany) for the sale of its precisExcite LED fluorescence excitation system in the USA. CoolLED's precisExcite is a flexible, modular system using interchangeable LED array modules to provide excitation across the visible spectrum. The system is integrated with imaging software packages from numerous microscope and imaging companies.

"LEDs are the future for fluorescence excitation. There is considerable interest from US cell biologists and we can now supply precisExcite to meet their needs," said Jim Beacher, CoolLED's business manager for precisExcite.

The LEDs in precisExcite are actively cooled to ensure high intensity, good stability and long lifetime. The system comprises a main unit that powers and cools the LED array modules; a manual control pod; light-guides which connect the unit to a combining collimator which then fits directly onto the microscope; and an adaptor which fits all current microscopes.

Excitation of fluorophores can be achieved by selecting the appropriate wavelength LED array modules from CoolLED's range of available wavelengths. These are interchangeable depending on which fluorophores chosen.

There are two configurations for precisExcite: standard collimator and the pE-2 collimator. The standard unit is suitable for most fluorescence applications and as a secondary light source for Confocal systems. The pE-2 configuration has a more sophisticated collimator which is particularly suitable for Live Cell imaging and fast-switching (~300 microsec) applications.