Hi,
I need to quantify renal and cardiac fibrosis in histology sections and am trying to set up our Olympus Bx43 microscope to analyse the birefringent collagen with picrosirius red stained images and circular polarization. The images come up as expected using the linear analyser and polariser that came with the microscope, however because only ~70-80% of collagen is visualised with any given orientation I thought it would be worth trying to use circular polarisation to visualise all orientations of collagen.
Unfortunately, while there are a fair few papers published using this technique I haven't been able to work out how to do it. We've purchased a 1/4 wave tint plate which slots in between the sample and the analyser but this doesn't seem to have done the job. Is it possible that the lower polariser needs to be a circular polariser rather than the one the microscope came with?
If anyone could offer any experience with this technique or advice that would be much appreciated!
Thanks
Hello April,
We adapted polarization on an old Leica microscope for analyze Sirius Red staining (collagen fiber). We only change condenser which accepted the different filters.
You have to request your Olympus store for a polarizer and an analyzer which are compatible with your microscope. It might not cost a lot.
As I see rapidly on the Olympus website this is possible with you microscope (see p32-33 in attached file).
Good luck,
VM
To perfectly see the orientation of collagens, you need the Phi-Viz Imaging System. It is some sort of accessories that is added to your optical microscope. You can check their product at
www.polaviz.com
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