About Us

Generally speaking, imaging technology can be classified into 3 categories:

• Absorbance, where light in a specific wavelength range can be absorbed with or without any emitted light;
• Fluorescence, where a substance absorbs light and then emits light with different colour;
• Chemiluminescence, which is the emission of light as the result of a chemical reaction.

The majority of biomedial imaging experiments are based on fluorescence. ALM-CF is established to support all the scientists of Saarland University with their fluorescence imaging experiments. 
With the support from ALM-CF, we hope that:
 

• the researchers of the university can better and faster generate reliable imaging data, and thus do better scientific investigations;
• the use efficiency of the instruments can be improved;
• the cooperations between the intra-groupes inside the university can be promoted and tightened.

The ALM-CF is open to all researchers at the university. External scientists can also use these instruments upon request.

What is our advantage?

The ALM-CF is not only a place that provides advanced imaging instruments, but also a platform that offers professional supports for the researchers of the university with their imaging experiments.

What we are good at

• Besides routine fluorescence imaging, ALM-CF specializes in imaging ultrafast biomedical signals, e.g. action potential and Ca²⁺ signals in neurons and cardiomyocytes.
• We also have extensive experiences in handling noise generated during the ultrafast imaging of living samples.
• Morden programming languages are always used in processing the imaging data, inluding Igor Pro, MatLab, C/C++ and python. From 2024, we started to use PyTorch-based deep neural network (DNN) / artificial intelligence (AI) in our routine data processing.