Iova Labs builds FREVR, a module that holds an optical microscope on its focal plane to within about 20 nanometers, for hours at a time.
Microscopes drift. As the instrument warms, settles, and responds to the room around it, the focal plane moves.
Over a few minutes this is invisible. Over four hours it is hundreds of nanometers, which is larger than the structures being measured. Super-resolution, single-molecule, and live-cell experiments are the ones that suffer most, because they are the ones that run longest and resolve the finest detail. A drifting acquisition is often discovered only after the experiment is over.
FREVR measures the true distance between the objective and the sample many times a second, and corrects it in real time. It drives the focus mechanism the microscope already has, so most installations need no new positioning hardware.
A fiducial bead sits on the sample substrate. Its diffraction pattern changes in a precise, repeatable way as the objective moves along the optical axis. FREVR compares the live pattern against a reference library to determine the true objective-to-sample distance, then corrects it.
Because the measurement is optical and made through the same objective as the experiment, it reflects what the sample is actually experiencing, rather than what a sensor elsewhere in the instrument reports.
Iova Labs is a Wisconsin company founded by two physicists who spent years building instruments that had to hold focus, and eventually built something that does.
The underlying method was developed in our laboratories, published in peer-reviewed literature, and is the subject of a pending patent application held by the UWM Research Foundation.
We are placing our first units with laboratories running long acquisitions on their own instruments, and we would like to hear from you.
Write to info@iovalabs.org and tell us what you image and how long your experiments run.