PicoQuant Luminosa

Use and training

To access this microscope, contact the facility to schedule a hands-on training session. Trained users have 24/7 access to the microscope and are free to schedule experiments using the online booking system. Training can only be given by facility staff.

Acknowledgements

Thank you for acknowledging our imaging facility. You can use the statement below in all your publications that include data acquired on the PicoQuant Luminosa:

We acknowledge the Advanced Optical Microscopy Centre at Hasselt University for support with the microscopy experiments. Microscopy was made possible by the Research Foundation Flanders (Medium Research Infrastructure Grant I002126N).

Specifications

Excitation

• CoolLED pE300 White LED
• 405 nm LDH-D-C-405S dual (pulsed and cw) laser diode head 
• 440 nm LDH-D-C-440 dual (pulsed and cw) laser diode head
• 488 nm LDH-D-C-485S dual (pulsed and cw) laser diode head
• 561 nm LDH-D-TA-560B dual (pulsed and cw) laser diode head
• 640 nm LDH-D-C-640S dual (pulsed and cw) laser diode head

Filter sets

The microscope is equipped with dedicated filters and beam splitter dichroics for optimal detection by the detector units.

Detection

The microscope is equipped with the following detectors:

• 3x Excelitas SPAD detectors.
• 1x PDA23 array detector.
• 3x USB cameras

Objective Lenses

The microscope can be equipped with 1 objective lens selected from the following list:

• 60x/1.20 UPlanSApo Water immersion (WD=0.28mm)
• 100x/1.40 UPlanSApo Oil immersio (WD=0.13mm)

Features

Single Molecule Sensitivity

The system's exceptional single-molecule sensitivity allows researchers to bypass ensemble averages and directly observe transient conformational changes, rare folding intermediates, and real-time molecular interactions.

Multichannel fluorescence lifetime imaging

Equipped with multiple ultra-sensitive detectors and flexible spectral routing, the Luminosa enables advanced multichannel FLIM experiments for the simultaneous, quantitative tracking of multiple biosensors or molecular targets.

Super-resolution fluorescence lifetime imaging

Featuring the advanced PDA-23 SPAD array, the Luminosa leverages Image Scanning Microscopy (ISM) to achieve super-resolution FLIM with up to a 1.7x improvement in spatial resolution and sharper contrast, all while preserving absolute quantitative lifetime precision.

Other

• Automated alignment procedures guarantee optimal experimental performance.
• Predefined and custom experimental procedures available at the click of a button.
• Powerful visualization and analysis features. 

Applications

The Luminosa is a powerful and versatile single-photon-counting confocal microscope capable of performing some of the most advanced imaging experiments:

• fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) (e.g. the visualization of protein-protein interactions using Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET)-FLIM).
• super-resolution FLIM imaging (e.g. precise localization of analytes in stained samples).
• fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) and raster image correlation spectroscopy (RICS) (e.g. studying membrane receptor mobility and interactions).
• single-molecule FRET studies.
• ...