A resource for the latest for imaging

There's a lot going on in the microscopy-imaging world.  It seems that each month brings publication

Long-travel coarse/fine specimen
positioners in a super-resolution
microscope, courtesy of the
Bewersdorf Lab at Yale University

of another clever technique that casts our eyes ever deeper into the nanoscale world.  The post-Rayleigh era of microscopy is in full bloom, and to support it have come new tools and technologies: new objectives of extreme capabilities; new cameras that waste not a single photon; new software which provides usability, enhances productivity and teases details out of the murk; and new motion technologies of surpassing precision and stability.

A current article in Microscopy Today serves as a compendium of recent motion technologies of specific interest to imaging scientists and engineers.  Its central focus is piezo ceramic technology in general and its burgeoning application in one novel design after another.  Familiar from layered stack actuators of astonishing resolution but limited travel, piezo ceramics are now utilized in long-travel designs spanning several broad mechanical classes.

The article discusses some of the most promising of these developments for imaging applications:

• High-stiffness piezo walking actuators for objective positioning over 2mm with picometer positionability; 
• High-stability resonant piezomotors for fast sample positioning with submicron precision over centimeters of travel; 
• New controls techniques for ever-finer linearity and controllability of flexure-guided piezo-stack mechanisms... 

Each of these newly-developed technologies represents a response to seemingly impossible application challenges.  Each is an enabler of new avenues of investigation, new discoveries, and new breakthroughs.  Perhaps yours will be among them!  Just let us know what impossible application challenges you'd like addressed next.