title: Improving fluorescence confocal microscopy with cryogenically-cooled diode lasers.
abstract: Recent advances in fluorescence confocal microscopy have focused on exciting multiple dyes, leading to the use of diode laser sources. We show that by varying a diode's operating parameters, diode lasers can address some of the inherent problems associated with multiple dye excitation. Cooling the laser diode caused its emission wavelengths to decrease linearly, its output power to increase five times, and the noise due to reflected laser light for equal fluorescence signals to be reduced five times. We utilized these improvements to produce fluorescence confocal images that minimized the reflected laser intensity, while still efficiently exciting the fluorochrome.
authors.forename: Nelson
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sivers
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Van de Workeen
authors.forename: Susanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.forename: Donald
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Szarowski