Andor Launches Dragonfly - the Most Complete Imaging Solution Ever!

Andor Technology, an Oxford Instruments company, is pleased to announce the launch of Dragonfly, a high-speed confocal imaging platform supporting multiple high-contrast imaging techniques.

Dragonfly integrates Andor’s industry-leading cameras with patented illumination technologies, and optimized optical design, to deliver outstanding image quality: characterised by low noise, wide dynamic range, high resolution and exceptional sensitivity. The Borealis Perfect Illumination Delivery™ system used for confocal and widefield imaging provides exceptional stability, uniformity and spectral range, extending into the NIR region, where autofluorescence can be largely avoided.

Up to twenty times faster than conventional confocal microscopes, Dragonfly is a highly productive imaging platform which provides superior spatial and temporal resolution, often revealing previously undetected information in microscopic specimens.

Dragonfly is designed to provide fast and sharp imaging of a wide range of specimens ranging from bacteria to single molecules at the cell membrane, embryos, organoids and fixed and acute tissue sections. Confocal illumination by hundreds of microbeams minimizes photobleaching and protects from phototoxicity, essential for successful live cell experiments. Dragonfly’s laser widefield imaging is seamlessly integrated with GPU-accelerated deconvolution, to embrace yeast and other thin specimen imaging, to reveal high contrast and excellent resolution at very low exposure levels.

The Dragonfly hardware platform has been developed alongside a new software suite named Fusion. Fusion is designed for ease-of-use and high performance, reducing the complexity of instrument control and simplifying acquisition. Intimately aware of multi-dimensional data, Fusion enables real-time volumetric image rendering to provide instant feedback of specimen health, imaging conditions and spatial relationships of key features within specimens. Fusion’s GPU-accelerated deconvolution, running at least 10x faster than conventional processing, offers iterative algorithms which enhance contrast as well as lateral and axial resolution in laser widefield, confocal and TIRF imaging. Deconvolution can be integrated with the acquisition protocols so that results are available with minimal delay and users avoid time consuming data transfer steps.

Dr Geraint Wilde, Product Manager for Microscopy Systems at Andor said “We believe that Dragonfly and Fusion herald a new chapter in confocal microscopy, fundamentally changing the user experience and allowing scientists to gather more high quality data in a shorter time than ever before. As a premier supplier of scientific detectors, with more than 10 years’ experience of the confocal market and over 400 systems in the field, we are in a strong position to deliver to the market a new concept for high-speed imaging. Feedback from beta testing surpassed even our highest expectations. Scientists found that gathering data was faster and lead to accelerated publication submissions; previously abandoned imaging experiments were re-established owing to the low photobleaching and depth of imaging made possible, and the multi-modality led to more questions being answered of a single specimen using a single imaging solution.”