M.E., Borrelia and Microscopy
Mark Stroud explains how Borrelia bacteria can be seen in a tiny drop of blood with a Darkfield microscope and his webpage describes how to convert a Brightfield microscope to Darkfield.
A darkfield microscope uses a special Condenser to focus light onto the subject which is seen illuminated on a dark background. This gives very high contrast for viewing feint subjects.
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I have used a 'brightfield' microscope to observe borrelia bacteria. This requires a particular setup and is easier with a digital camera with high light sensitivity. The technique is described on the following pages. |
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I use a Fuji F10 digital camera with my setup. This has very high light sensitivity (equivalent to ISO 1600) and it can also make quite good quality videos. With this and some other refinements I made the videos you can see on these pages.
Here are some videos I have made through my microscope of a tiny drop of periferal (fingertip) blood in saline. Click on an image to watch the video. The original videos are 640x480 at 30 fps. The videos should play at normal speed. Some are reduced size (1:2) and some others are cropped. These videos have enhanced contrast, noise reduction and smoothing. The varying coloration is due to different camera, microscope and illumination settings.
You can download these videos to your computer by clicking the Right Mouse Button and choosing 'Save Target As'
All of these video were made using BRIGHTFIELD
microscopy.
It took me quite a lot of time and practice to refine my microscopy technique for seeing these bacteria, but it is not actually difficult now that I have identified a few simple procedures to follow. I would never have developed this method without the generosity of Mark Stroud in sharing his work.
Following are a few pages describing the equipment and techniques I have used.
NEXT: Equipment
Or back to: Introduction
