Hello everyone,
We are in the process of buying a new spinning-disk. A solution could be a Crest V3 coupled to a Kinetix from Photometrics. While the Crest looks good after a week of test, we have no feedback on the Kinetix.
Does anyone have some feedback ? In terms of sensitivity compared to other sCMOS cameras ?
For info, so far, the main argument for the Kinetix is the size of its chip, compatible with the 25-mm output of the Crest. So if you have any other arguments to put in the basket, please feel free !
Thank you !
Julien
Hey Julien!
We haven’t seen the Kinetix, but we have a Hamamatsu ORCA-Fusion BT on one of our spinning disks and are v. happy with it.
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Hello Jennifer !
Thank you for your feedback. I agree it would be a good alternative, although the diagonal of the chip is 21mm, I would lose some interests in the Crest technology…
Cheers
Julien
Hi Julien,
I demo’ed a kinetix anf I’m considering it as an upgrade to a very similar system, Nikon body + V3. I haven’t bought the camera because I still have a TiE. In terms of sensitivity I saw a very similar performance to my Prime BSI (which is what I have coupled to the V3). It has also a “fast” mode but need lots of photons to get nice images at 500 fps. Talking to photometrics recently they told me that the noise is even lower now for this fast mode. For us, doing tiling and mosaics as our bread an butter the larger field of view is greatly appreciated. The fast mode might have some nice applications, like pixel based FCS or calcium imaging.
hope that helps,
Alvaro
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I think Crest is a great choice but be aware it may not give as dark a background so you don’t need as good performance for low photon applications as the Yokogawa instruments. sCMOS might be better than EMCCD as they tend to be more rugged.
I’ve not done side by side comparisons but have owned Yokogawa, CARV (in a PathwayHT) and slit scanning technology (Meridian InSight Point). Ocular viewing confocal was a delight to use on the Pathway and InSight, so its a pity the new systems don’t offer it.
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Hello Alvaro,
Thank you very much for your feedback on it. Even if the speed is not the criterion that will drive the choice, it is interesting to know that it might be possible for slides with strong signal.
Just like you, we aim to perform mosaic and tiling on this system, and it will be our main application, but I will keep in mind your ideas of potential applications !
Thank you again
Julien
Hello David,
Thank you for your input. I don’t have any experience at all on Crest, and it looks promising. Do you think that the not-so-dark background is due to their disk technology ?
I’ve never tried ocular viewing confocal, but i admit it might be of great use in many contexts !
Julien
The original Yokogawa CSU10 had a very mean field of view, but the double disc lenslet system meant that the camera was looking at a black disc with holes showing the returning light. Single disc systems have the whole blast of excitation light hitting the camera side of the spinning disc, but they are much less claustrophobic so in my opinion the benefits outweigh the cost. A colleague had an earlier CARV system with a cooled CCD camera. He decided to upgrade to EMCCD and was disappointed with the slight improvement in signal to noise. It was still better than the old camera, but not by much.
Ocular viewing was great, but grad students tended to just use the screen, so managing without is certainly practical with modern cameras. Back in 1994, the camera technology was so far behind the Meridian, and there were relatively few ocular-only applications. It could screen 100 Arabidopsis seedlings per hour, but the grad students could only handle 2 hour shifts at that pace. We semi-automated with our PathwayHT (CARV) system for similar throughput and saved data. That instrument is no longer supported, so we have to use a Zeiss 880 Airyscan Fast, which isn’t designed for screening but does have the speed and sensitivity.
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Thank you, I learned quite a few things here !
Have a great day
Julien