Nikon Coolscope Digital Microscope
The Nikon Coolscope digital microscope is a self-contained unit (resembling a personal computer tower), which includes all of the necessary functions for observation of specimens in brightfield illumination, along with convenient digital image capture, and local or wide area network communication capabilities. The unit features a simple configuration with an intuitive graphical user interface displayed in a single window for quick and efficient operation. This interactive tutorial examines remote operational capabilities of the Coolscope using the native browser screen provided with the software package.
The tutorial initializes with a randomly selected specimen appearing in the image window at 5x magnification, and the digital microscope controls set to their default levels. Beneath the image window is a pull down menu (Choose A Specimen) and a microscope slide containing a macro image of the specimen being observed. The slide is overlaid with a red crosshair that targets the region being magnified in the image window. Positioned on the right-hand side of the image window are the digital microscope browser-level remote hardware controls.
In order to operate the tutorial, use the eight octagonally-arranged arrow buttons to translate the red crosshairs across the image in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal direction. When the crosshair target is changed, a new image appears in the window showing the region beneath the crosshairs. The magnification buttons enable the specimen to be viewed with the 5x (default), 10x, 20x, or 40x enlargements (on the microscope CCD sensor). Microscope hardware remote control buttons provide adjustment of the Focus, D-Zoom (digital zoom), Aperture (condenser), and AE (exposure control). The Focus buttons include AF (auto focus), and a plus/minus combination that enables manual changes to the focal plane in small increments. Digital zoom (D-Zoom) plus/minus buttons control the pixel size of the digital image broadcast to the browser at 100 (default), 200, 400, or 800 percent. The Aperture buttons open or close the condenser aperture in 25-percent intervals (over a range of 25 to 100 percent). The exposure control buttons (AE) increase or decrease exposure in 1/3 f-stop increments over plus or minus 2 stops. The Download, Interval Timer, Annotation, and Reload controls are not functional in the tutorial.
The Coolscope is an entirely new concept in self-contained digital microscopy with Internet broadcast capabilities. Illumination of the specimen is accomplished with a novel white light diode (LED) array, and images are captured on a 2/3-inch charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensor having 5.24 million pixels. Conversion of the analog image acquired by the CCD to digital format is performed with a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter, which also contains user adjustable white-balance and gamma algorithms. Live image display occurs at 7.5 frames per second in progressive mode and 3.75 frames per second in interlaced mode. Captured image sizes are 2560 x 1920 or 1280 x 960 pixels in size, and these can be stored in bitmap (BMP) or JPEG format. The microscope is configured with 10/100 Base-TX Ethernet hardware and server software, including HTTP, TelNet, and FTP (also FTP client). Images can also recorded on Compact Flash card media.
For more information on the amazing Nikon Coolscope digital microscope, visit Nikon's Digital Microscope COOLSCOPE official website.
Contributing Authors
Matthew J. Parry-Hill, John D. Griffin, and Michael W. Davidson - National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, 1800 East Paul Dirac Dr., The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, 32310.
