NightOWL II LB 983 - Superiority in Imaging

BERTHOLD TECHNOLOGIES is pleased to introduce the third generation of low light imagers. In 1989, when introducing the LB 980 Luminograph, BERTHOLD TECHNOLOGIES became one of the pioneers of in-vivo imaging. In those times intensified CCD cameras with a quantum efficiency of 25% were used.

In 1996 LB 981 NightOWL became introduced with CCD cameras of up to 75 % quantum efficiency. Today, high performance slow scan CCD cameras with quantum efficiencies of 85 – 90 % have been developed for most sensitive measurements.

Today, chip sizes are 1 Mega pixel respectively 3,2 Mega pixel for best optical resolution. Pixel binning of up to 10 x 10 allows most sensitive bioluminescence. 150 – 250 cells in a cluster can be detected subcutaneous.

BERTHOLD TECHNOLOGIES is the only manufacturer moving the camera inside the cabinet. Since the position of the camera is known every time, the system is always height corrected enabeling quantitative luminescent measurements in each camera position.

The proven fluorescence technology from LB 940 Mithras was transferred into LB 983 NightOWL II enabeling now quantitative fluorescence measurements. The energy of the lamp can be set very precise by a 16-bit lamp energy factor. With such a lamp setting the light beam is kept stable and reproducible for each measurement. The settling time of the lamp requires maximal 2 seconds, filter changing needs 300 ms.

A lamp energy factor can be set for each fluorophor with its specific filter combination. This allows setting of the instrument in such a way that the same signal intensity is generated for the same concentration of different fluorophors. Comparison of multilabeled samples will become very easy in the future.

The spectral response of the CCD cameras between 300 and 1100 nm correlate with the spectrum of the tungsten lamp. Filters with specific central wavelength, bandwidth and transmission allow optimal excitation of all fluorophors in this spectral range. Therefore, experiments with NIR-labels or Qdots are easy to perform.

A lot of options like macrotable, plate positioner, transilluminators, gas anaesthesia, orthogonal 3D mirror system and animal beds for multimodality imaging expand the field of applications. The proven software WinLight enables the user to control each parameter. Routine analysis is automated by macro functions.