UNITYlife
Unitylife
Complete confocal microscope for live cell imaging.
True to its name, unity brings together in one fully integrated, compact and easy to use microscope, everything you need for confocal imaging on your bench top.
With an integrated stage-top incubator and connection for CO2, Unity Life is the ideal confocal Live Cell Imaging system.
Laser Free Confocal
Designed around Aurox’s laser-free confocal technology, unity combines Aurox’s patented structured illumination spinning disc with state-of-the-art technology and a unique, novel optical arrangement. The results are high quality confocal images recorded quickly and easily in your laboratory.
Structured Illumination Spinning Disk
Aurox' laser free spinning disc uses a grid pattern which achieves high light efficiency with a speed of a spinning disc. This allows the use of laser free light sources, giving a high quality confocal images.
Unity brings together in one fully integrated, compact and easy to use microscope, everything you need for live-cell confocal imaging.
Stage incubator & Co2 connections
Unity’s red cased incubator sample stage provides heating and CO2 gas connections for sample environment control, allowing your live-cell samples to be maintained at 35-37 degrees Celsius and under CO2 for the duration of your longer term imaging experiments.
Fast multichannel acquisition
Red, blue, green - set 1, 2 or 3 colour channels at a time. One tap each switches on or off the colour channels. Set exposure times and brightness by dragging up or down on the respective colour chevrons. Handy histograms help you achieve optimal settings.
Easy to use- Plug & Play
Gone are the tangle of cables found on other confocal systems. Unity requires a single power cable and has rear ports for the connection of a CO2 supply. Unity can be networked wirelessly, but it also has a wired network connection and multiple USB-3 / USB-c ports if required.
Compact- Fits on lab bench
Designed for the laboratory bench-top, Unity is extremely compact and self-contained, weighing less than 25 Kg and has an integrated vibration dampening.
Unity is ideal for use in the light and airy open laboratory,
- Easy to use with minimal interaction
- Easy to move and locate
- Easy to maintain / clean
- Plug and play
For slides, plates and dishes
Unity is supplied with three interchangeable sample holders allowing you to image all your samples, whether they are mounted in multi-well plates, petri-dishes or slides. Each of the Unity sample holders has a retention system to hold the sample securely in the holder and a three point magnetic location system which connects to Unity's XY stage on loading. This system ensures the sample holder position is securely held throughout imaging experiments
Technical specifications
| Confocality: | 0.6 μm (FWHM) with 1.4 N.A oil objective |
| Disc: | 1 sector structured illumination disc. |
| Minimum exposure: | 20 ms |
| Maximum frame rate: |
Up to 40 fps (1 colour) Up to 13 fps (3-colours) |
| Imaging channels: | 3 integrated filter channels, DAPI, FITC, TRITC. |
| Channel switching: | Instantaneous. |
| Detector: | Integrated sCMOS 2x (2048 x 2048), 6.5 µm pixels. |
| Excitation range: | 370 - 700 nm |
| Emission range: | 410 - 750 nm |
Click on the buttons inside the tabbed menu:
Motorised XYZ stage
Other microscope stages carry the sample, sample mount, incubator and most of all the heavy microscope stage itself. These all ride around supported and driven by necessarily large heavy duty motor assemblies.
We only move the sample and sample mount in our holder and we glide. Part of this is because we don't need to move the stage in Z. The rest is because the sample holder sits on a low friction glass plate over which the sample glides like a hockey puck as we push it around X and Y. Pushing is done by two ultra compact precision magnetic motors moving along magnetised guide poles.
Software
Unity iOS provides all the functionality required for the set-up, control and review of confocal and widefield imaging experiments in a quick and easy to use iPAD application. Imaging is easy with Unity. Simply: Tap Drag Swipe
Unity's bright, safe, led
Our spinning disk confocal technology is upto 50% more light efficient than our competitors, meaning Lasers are not needed. Instead, Unity uses a built in multi-spectral LED light source of high brightness and based on the CoolLED pE-300Ultra, making Unity: Free from laser safety restrictions; Low photo-toxicity; Low photo-bleaching; Low maintenance; Low cost of ownership.
2X(4MPIX) scientific cmos camera
At the heart of Unity is a custom designed large format and high performance sCMOS digital detector. Developed in collaboration with Ximea, the camera has been designed specifically for use in Unity and for confocal imaging experiments. Unity's camera has a novel design, consisting of two 2k x 2k scientific grade CMOS chips mounted side by side with shared electronics such that the two chips are pixel to pixel registered allowing Aurox's patented approach to laser-free confocal imaging. Unity uses the camera to record both confocal and widefield images in both the low magnification sample overview mode (large field of view of 4mm x 4mm) and also in the high magnification 4-100x mode for the imaging of high resolution Z-stacks.
High magnification objective
Unity comes with both a low magnification (3.25x) overview; used for bulk sample imaging and an integrated high magnification objective lens for detailed study. The high magnification objective is customisable at point of order and can be selected from 20-60x magnification Nikon oil, water or dry lenses.
Cpu and image server
Unity does more than just collect high quality confocal imaging data. Unity also stores your data on 2x 2Tb SSD integrated servers and makes your data accessible to you, wherever you are over a secure network.
Tablet Interface
Unity comes complete with an iPad Pro tablet computer for full fingertip control. The iPAD communicates directly with Unity over a dedicated and secure private wireless connection, issuing commands and visualising data saved on Unity's built in image server. For speed of data stream response, images are optimised for fast feedback and display on the iPAD. The full high resolution collected images are permanently stored on Unity's internal server. The iPAD works as a remote control, issuing commands and receiving feedback. All command actions are controlled by Unity's internal control software and firmware.
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Application image gallery
Click on the images below:
