Confocal and Atomic Force Microscopy

A wide range of different forms of microscopy may be applied to the visualisation of biological specimens. Confocal microscopy can provide 3D information about fluorescently labelled cells with the added advantage that it excludes out of focus light. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) provides direct high resolution images of surface features of a sample. Here we look at the microscope configuration necessary for simultaneous confocal and AFM, and examine how the combination of the two techniques together with the ‘Direct Overlay’ function can be used to great advantage in cell research for correlating surface and internal features.