Multichannel control

Purpose

The Multichannel control window has the following functions:

  • Enable color channels for imaging, i.e., for the Tissue scan workflow, Image stack acquisition, or acquiring an image of the Current plane.

  • Turn illumination with individual color channels on and off, and switch between color channels.

  • Save current settings from the following panels as a preset in preparation for acquiring images in more than one color channel (without having to adjust settings between channels):

The Multichannel control panel is a dockable window.

Multichannel control functions

Click Multichannel control on the Acquire ribbon to open the Multichannel control panel.

Enable color channels for sample imaging

  1. In the Multichannel control panel, click Setup... to open the Multichannel Setup dialog.

  2. On the Multichannel acquires tabs, enable the color channels you will use by checking the boxes to Acquire channel.

  3. Click OK to close the Multichannel Setup dialog.

    The buttons in the Multichannel control panel for enabled channels will show their information and display a color bar to the right.

    Buttons for channels that are not enabled will say Not Enabled in somewhat grayed out letters.

Turn illumination with individual color channels on and off

Click the "button" for the color channel you want to make active in the Multichannel control panel.

There are three color channels set up in the panel, corresponding to the three laser excitation wavelengths:

  • Blue, excitation 450 nm

  • Green, excitation 520 nm

  • Red, excitation 640 nm

The corresponding filter in the SLICE Light Sheet panel panel is activated when you select a color channel in the Multichannel control panel.

  • Blue, emission center 513 nm, bandpass width 22 nm

  • Green, emission center 576 nm, bandpass width 23 nm

  • Red, emission center 680 nm, bandpass width 30 nm

Save light sheet and camera feed display settings for each color channel

To view microscopy samples clearly, you will need to optimize visualization of the tissue as for each color channel individually as follows:

Once these visualization settings have been identified, save them to the color channel in the Multichannel control panel.

  • Click the Save button near the bottom of the panel. The words on the button will reflect the selected color channel, for example Save Red (640) for the red channel.

  • If you forgot to save settings before moving on to optimization of a different channel, it's not too late to save the settings.

    Click More to open the Preset Saving Options window and click the Save button for the color channel that you initially forgot to save.

See also Tissue scan workflow, Current plane