Microscopy @ UCT

The AMI Imaging Centre is an open-access facility housed in the Health Sciences Faculty at UCT. The Imaging Centre houses a fleet of advanced, commercial light microscopes. These instruments are tailored for use in the life sciences and provide high spatial and temporal resolution to study a variety of biological materials.  Access to the Imaging Centre is through peer-reviewed proposals open to all African scientists working at a non-profit African institution.

The Confocal and Light Microscope Imaging Facility at UCT offers access to a multi-functional Carl Zeiss 880 LSM confocal microscope with Fast Airyscan technology and the Elyra S1 super-resolution microscope. The Facility offers researchers access to super and near-super resolution, real-time live cell and tissue imaging including a multitude of quantitative imaging and analysis techniques.

The Electron Microscope Unit (EMU) is a central service unit at UCT that provides access to a range of electron microscopy and analysis facilities for the research and industry communities. The EMU specialises in meeting the needs of both the physical and life science disciplines.

The Electron Microprobe facility allows the quantitative and/or qualitative analysis of a wide range of elements (from boron through uranium, if present in sufficient concentration) of solid materials at the micron scale.

The MCB Microscope Facility houses a Nikon Ti-E inverted microscope with a motorized stage, CO₂ incubator for live imaging of cells, six filter blocks (DAPI, FITC/Alexa 488, Texas Red/Mcherry, YFP, CFP, Cy5) and DIC optics. The microscope is linked to NIS-Elements AR imaging software which will allow image acquisition with a DSFi2 colour camera and two Andor EMCCD monochrome cameras.

QEMSCAN (Quantitative Evaluation of Minerals by Scanning Electron Microscopy) is an analytical tool which provides rapid, reproducible and statistically reliable quantitative information on minerals and certain man-made materials for a variety of disciplines. This tool has been custom developed for the mining industry.

Virtual microscopy is a method of posting whole slide microscope images and transmitting them over computer networks. This allows independent viewing of a microscope slide by large numbers of people in diverse locations. It involves a synthesis of microscopy and digital technologies.