Zeiss microscopy technology gets European patent

Drs. Harald Hess and Eric Betzig of Jena, Germany-based Carl Zeiss Microscopy have received a European patent for their superresolution photoactivated localization microscopy technology. They received US patents in 2009 and 2011 based on the same invention. The patent protects methods and devices for photoactivated localization microscopy, which activates and excites only a small number of fluorescent dye molecules in a sample at a time, enabling the physical position of the individual fluorescent molecules to be determined to within a few nanometers. A superresolution image of the sample is generated by repeating a photoinduced separation of fluorescent dye molecules and adding consecutively captured individual images.