The Advanced Optical Microscopy Facility
The Advanced Optical Microscopy Facility (AOMF) is the largest core facility of its type in Canada. Through collaboration and integration of microscopy laboratories across UHN, AOMF has become a sustainable core facility that supports over 600 researchers a year.
With over 40 instruments at four UHN sites, AOMF offers UHN researchers and the broader researcher community access to a wide array of microscopy technologies and the expertise of the AOMF team.
AOMF has a range of cutting-edge microscopes and imaging systems, including confocal, multiphoton, widefield, super-resolution, tissue slide scanners and more. While confocal microscopes are the most popular instruments, AOMF is home to several specialty instruments such as super-resolution (STED, GSD), Raman, and Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) microscopes.
AOMF also provides full-service brightfield and fluorescence slide scanning, digitizing entire slides in high resolution. These images are used in tandem with very powerful pattern-recognition software, which provides cell by cell quantification of entire tissue sections.
Staff at AOMF come from diverse backgrounds in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology and have many years of experience in the field of microscopy. This creative and innovative team provides full-service slide scanning, image analysis, microscopy and image analysis training to researchers, students, and industry partners. The AOMF core facility also offers comprehensive courses and tailored workshops on microscopy to trainees from across the country.
If you have a sample that fluoresces or interacts with light in some way, AOMF can image it or extract information from it to support your research.