Filter Wheel and Shutter Control

Filter

Useful to anyone needing computer control of a filter wheel or shutter.

Many of the newest staining and marking techniques result in microscopic slides which must be examined using a microscope equipped with flourescent options including:

Refelcted Light Flourescent Illuminator with Xenon, Mercury, or Quartz-Halogen Lamp
Selected Excitation Filters
Selected Dichroic Filter Cubes
Selected Epi-Flourescent Microscope Objectives
Selected Barrier Filters

To analyze these with a computer image analysis system, it is very helpful to add a computer controlled filter wheel and shutter to the microscope. This allows the computer image analysis system to easily select the appropriate excitation filter either at the user's request or on the command of a program performing an analysis algorithm. By including a shutter in the system, the computer can also avoid the problem of photo-bleaching by exposing the sample to the high intensity illumination for as short a period as possible.

The Filter Wheel and Shutter Control routine gives the user a dialog box with buttons which open and close the shutter and select the appropriate filter. It also defines a series of Optimas ALI functions. These functions simplify writing ALI programs requiring communication with the filter wheel and shutter.

This program is written to operate the LUDL six position filter wheel/shutter combination controlled by the MAC 2000 serial connected control console. It could be modified to work with any filter wheel which accepts command through a serial cable from the host computer.

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Meyer Instruments, Inc.
1304 Langham Creek, Suite 235
Houston, TX 77084
(281)-579-0342 (phone)
(281)-579-1551 (facsimile)
Meyer@MeyerInst.com (electronic mail)