Awesome thanks! 🙏

So you add a trace amount of dish soap to the water immersion droplet? That's wild! Like occasionally or every time?

Done! 👍

Queen? ;)

This is a great addition to any microscope that uses remote refocus optics (like a Snouty light-sheet microscope).

-> It makes for a very versatile 3D imaging platform with minimal impact on transmission efficiency.

For more details see the publication here:
amsikking.github.io/any_immersio...

So whereas normally we arrange remote refocus optics as a series of static lenses that are optimized for a particular sample RI (e.g. 1.51 for oily samples).

-> Here we show a zoom lens design that can dynamically adjust to any sample refractive index from water to oil! (i.e. RI range 1.33-1.51)

I called this technique 'any immersion remote refocus' (AIRR) microscopy.

-> For more details see the publication here: amsikking.github.io/any_immersio...

In practice, using an air objective to image deep into a liquid sample is a powerful technique!

-> The air objective is easy to use and automate, and doesn't fail like liquid immersion (i.e. not sufficiently hydrated, bubbles, etc). It's also thermally isolated and allows high speed tilling!

The different immersion options have different advantages.

-> Here I show that (with a watery sample) the water objective can image the deepest, the oil objective has the highest numerical aperture and the air objective avoids liquid immersion!

This enables new and interesting imaging regimes with totally mismatched immersion and sample refractive index!

-> Here I show a remote refocus microscope imaging deep into a watery sample. The water immersion works well (as expected), but so does the air and oil immersion!