A new fast-imaging polarimeter under development at Cambridge Research & Instrumentation Inc. will enable users to measure the optical anisotropy of specimens in less than 1 s. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company received a Small Business Technology Transfer Phase II grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop the LC PolScope, which uses a precision liquid crystal universal compensator to make measurements at all points of the image within a charge-coupled device camera's field of view. Researchers assert that the system, when integrated into a light microscope, will advance the analytic power of the polarized light microscope for applications in biology, mineralogy and metallography.