Customer Reviews

Handbook of Biological Confocal Microscopy

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Handbook of Biological Confocal Microscopy is a great collection of essays on a multitude of topics ranging from optics, laser physics and photochemistry to fluorescent labeling of cells and live cell microscopy. The depth of some essays may be beyond the comfortable grasp of a biologist but after all, this is a handbook not a textbook. There is one chapter of general confocal tips, which is very useful but in general the book is aimed more at experts than casual users (not that there's anything wrong with that). Some chapters appear to not have been updated for the last edition and thus sound a touch outdated but this mostly concerns some technical chapters. All in all a very good source of fairly detailed information about (almost) all aspects of biological confocal microscopy.

It's a good comprehensive reference book on the imaging techniques of year 2005 (by now, the book lost a bit of this "comprehensiveness"). I'd give the book 5 stars, if not the price, for which I expect the editor to work a little more to make the chapters more coherent, correct for, sometimes, heavy language and explanations (it's too clear, the book is written by many different people) and make the book to look less as a tutorial and more as a textbook, with a logical connection between the chapters. Given that I would recommend this book to someone, who needs to go into details of many different topics of microscopy and wants to be sure he doesn't miss anything (as of 2005).

If you want to really learn about LSCM, then THIS is the option. Every chapter was written by experts in the particular subjet and it covers from the theory to solving practical problems with your LSCM observations. A great reference book.

I have been imaging my brain slices with a Zeiss LSM 510 for three years when I finally bought this book. A lot of the things that are in this handbook can be learned by trial and error; however, I would highly recommned anybody who is planning to do a lot of imaging and analysis to get to know some of the principles of confocal microscopy BEFORE wasting a lot of time. This book contains both highly technical chapters on the physics and optics of microscopy, as well as more light reading and direct advice for how to approach a project.
Highly recommend it!

This is a great Handbook that contains many well written papers on various aspects of Confocal Microscopy, with emphasis on biological samples. There are basic and tutorial articles as well as some detailed specific studies. Many color photographs and charts are also included where appropriate. I highly recommend it to novice and expert workers in this field. For the former, it will provide a decent foundation, especially with references that are in each article; and for the latter, it serves as a compendium of good practices.

For some reason, I was expecting the confocal images that explained or illustrated the book to knock me off me feet... Honestly, that's not exactly the case.

However, regardless of this, this book is an amazing tool to begin or improve your confocal skills in the field of life science. They remembered to bring up every single topic you'll require or ask about when using the microscope to its fullest. You'll just need to put in the bench-side hours -- many, many of them! -- with that generous confocal dude looking over and giving you the cool tips on the equipment, and you'll be set.