C7780-20T Hamamatsu Camera Controller

The Hamamatsu ORCA-3CCD Cooled Digital Color Camera System incorporates three cooled CCD chips, providing the rapid readout, high resolution, and superior S/N ration of the Hamamatsu ORCA digital camera series. The three color CCDs employ an RGB prism to achieve extremely high quality color representation without color blur, a performance difficult to achieve with a single-CCD camera. The CCDs used are the same as those used in the ORCA series, providing proven high quantum efficiency and high resolution, cooled to 0°C for high sensitivity detection. It is suitable for a wide range of applications, from brightfield (i.e., stained pathological specimens) to fluorescent specimens using GFP and fluorescent antibodies.

The Hamamatsu ORCA-3CCD Cooled Digital Color Camera System incorporates three color CCDs with an RGB prism to achieve color separation superior to that available with a conventional single CCD with mosaic filter for microscope use. Trichrome stained DAPI (blue), BODIPY FL (green), and MitoTracker (red) specimens were observed simultaneously using a D-F-T triple band mirror cassette. Separation of the color image into B, G, and R revealed admixture of BODIPY FL (green) fluorescence in the B (blue) and R (red) channels when using the single CCD with mosaic filter; however when the ORCA-3CCD was used, skillful matching of the fluorescent dyes with the wavelength separation prism achieved excellent color separation.

The use of three color CCDs in the ORCA-3CCD eliminates the deterioration in B (blue) and R (red) resolution which tends to occur with single color CCDs. The high spatial resolution of approximately 1.3 mega pixels for each of the R, G, and B channels allows acquisition of highly detailed fluorescent images.

The Hamamatsu ORCA-3CCD Cooled Digital Color Camera System employs Hamamatsu's own cooling technology to lower the temperature of the CCDs to 0°C. This significantly reduces the noise characteristics often associated with long exposures, thus allowing observation of faint levels of fluorescence.