By returning to the very basics of how a microscope forms an image, Aurox have built a very simple instrument to provide affordable 3D imaging for laboratory microscopes.
Aurox is the winner of a 2012 Innovation Award from the Institute of Physics celebrating companies that make the most of applying physics in a commercial environment.
Aurox 3D microscopy attachment connected to Zeiss optical microscope
Transcript
Prof Tony Wilson: Aurox is essentially an applied optics company building specialised three-dimensional microscope imaging instruments.
Dr Rimas Juskaitis: Aurox is providing an instrument which is small and inexpensive enough to be attached to a conventional microscope that an independent researcher will already have in his lab.
Prof Tony Wilson: What we are trying to do is to add functionality to that microscope, to provide the three-dimensional imaging. With all optical microscopes, one ends up with a very good high-resolution in-focus image with blurred bits above and below. The whole idea of the Aurox product is to get rid of these blurred bits.
We modify the illumination of the microscope. It’s then a matter of clever optics and computer processing to have a wonderful three-dimensional representation of the whole object.
Dr Rimas Juskaitis: It’s a very satisfying experience when something that you worked on for many years finally gets released into the outer world and you get vey positive responses from the end users. I think this is the whole point why we do this.
About the film
Filmed on location at:
- Aurox, Culham Science Centre, Culham, UK. September 2012.
Director: Martyn Bull
Producer: Thomas Delfs
Camera: Mark Whatmore
Editors: Liam Angell, Mike Willbourne
Cast: Professor Tony Wilson, Dr Rimas Juskaitis
Production company: insitu
Client: Institute of Physics
Camera: RED Epic, Canon 550D
Martyn James Bull { Writer + Filmmaker + Creative Director } 