Yokogawa CSU-X1 vs Crest X-Light V3 light output

Has anyone compared the two of these systems in terms of emission? Neither have microlens arrays in the emission path, and both appear to have 50um diameter pinholes with 250um spacing.

Am I misunderstanding how pinhole spacing works, and Yokogawa’s able to get a higher density of pinholes than CrestOptics can?

Techs from a large microscopy company seem to think the CSU-X1 is superior, but it’s not clear to me why.

Thanks in advance,
Will

REPLY FROM COMMERCIAL VENDOR.

I also wanted to comment on the power and flexibility of the xlight V3 spinning confocal system. I believe it is actually more comparable to the yokogawa W1 with the large field of view for sCMOS cameras.

  • You may choose your preferred pinhole configuration: either the 50 micron diameter/2500 micron spacing (as used on the yokogawa X1) or the 50 micron diameter/5000 micron spacing (as used in the Yokogawa W1). The larger spacing reduces crosstalk between pinholes for deeper samples.

  • It has been designed to work with Multi-mode lasers and is delivered with a powerful low cost digital laser merge module with 6 lasers (typically 405,445, 488,520,555,640 nm) to cover most common probes.

  • Provides an even illumination field without extra “homogeneizer” options.

  • The motorized dichroic and emitter allow easy selection of bandpass filters.

  • The dual camera option is used for either two identical sCMOS cameras for simultaneous capture or with a combination of sCMOS for high resolution and EMCCD cameras to accommodate the dimmest signals.

You can follow this link for more information.

Fernando Delaville

fernando@biovis.com

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A bit of a late reply but maybe it’s useful to you anyway:

I’ve tested the dragonfly, CSU-X1, W1 and the X-light v3. I never did a precise head-to-head but I ended up purchasing the v3 since I was budget constrained and the v3 allowed me to save money on the disk and laser and instead spend that money on the cameras (2x Hamamatsu Fusions).

As I understand it, the X1 has micro lenses in front of the light source while the V3 doesn’t, and as you mentioned, both don’t have any lenses in the emission path. The v3 is definitely less light efficient on the illumination side since it doesn’t have micro lenses though this is very nicely compensated for by the powerful multimode laser I have connected to it. Light output seems approximately the same between systems though that it is hard to compare directly. I’m very happy with my system and don’t have any regrets or issues with it so far after owning it for a year.

The Yokogawa systems are still fantastic and I’ve used those for years but the v3 cost saving is hard to beat.

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I referenced your thread a lot as the ~$200k total for everything you got was quite jaw-dropping! Do you mainly do fixed imaging where the atypical lines of the cheapest LDI doesn’t matter as much? Switching 470 to 488 and 555 to 577 would have added a fair amount to the price, and the main intended use case will be fast live cell imaging of weakly expressing FPs.

The V3 does use microlenses–but as I understand it, they are solely for homogenizing the illumination. The X1’s microlenses boost excitation transmission AND reduce the amount of reflected light from the disk. I was worried that some of the stray light eventually makes it through the disk/objective to the sample, but CrestOptics says this isn’t the case. To CrestOptics’ credit, the high OD filters and variable irises (and supposedly the V3’s re-designed light path) do a good job of preventing this stray light from reaching the camera. The X1 has the benefit of the dichroic being placed between the dual disks. I didn’t fully appreciate the X1’s design until about a month ago. I just really wished that the X1 had a larger FOV.

One additional consideration in our case are FRAP capabilities–as I understand it, those units need single-mode fibers, so buying extra lasers can get quite expensive, especially if 561 is among the list. Depending on who’s sourcing the lasers (and how many you need), utilizing a galvo switcher is possible and might close the cost difference gap between the X1 and V3.

There’s a lot of extra info here, and it isn’t necessarily directed at anyone–I hope it’s helpful for future readers.

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I referenced your thread a lot as the ~$200k total for everything you got was quite jaw-dropping! Do you mainly do fixed imaging where the atypical lines of the cheapest LDI doesn’t matter as much? Switching 470 to 488 and 555 to 577 would have added a fair amount to the price, and the main intended use case will be fast live cell imaging of weakly expressing FPs.

I do mostly live cell, 2 camera imaging. My signal is always decent so I’m wasn’t too worried about the LDI being off peak excitation.

One additional consideration in our case are FRAP capabilities–as I understand it, those units need single-mode fibers, so buying extra lasers can get quite expensive, especially if 561 is among the list. Depending on who’s sourcing the lasers (and how many you need), utilizing a galvo switcher is possible and might close the cost difference gap between the X1 and V3.

If you just need a simple FRAP setup, I know the Rapp AiWon and the UGA-42 Geo both work with the LDI.

Fair enough. We’ll be going for simultaneous two camera imaging as well, so I’m trying to mitigate phototoxicity.

I’ve never heard of either of those two options, so thanks for sharing!

I suppose it’s worth noting that the CrestOptics X-Light V3 is capable of a poor (wo)man’s FRAP approach by using the variable iris. From CrestOptics:

We tried the poor man’s FRAP approach a few times and it can work if:

  • You are OK to bleach a square region localized at the center of the FOV (you can use a motorized stage to move the sample accordingly)
  • You are OK with bleaching a region of approx. 12x12um with a 60X objective (approx. 7x7um with a 100X objective)
  • You are OK with some delay between the bleaching and the recovery phase. This delay depends a little bit on how you do the bleaching:
    • If you bleach in confocal mode just using the laser at 100% you will only have to consider the iris moving time, approx. 1 second

If you want extra power and use the widefield modality for bleaching (disk out or bypass mode), you will need approx. 3 seconds between bleaching and imaging

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Will, the AiWon and UGA-42 from Rapp Opto are both excellent systems. Like Andrew said, they are compatible with the LDI series illuminators from 89 North.