Confocal - "Line-iness" issue, in timelapse

I got a call from Austin a few days ago saying that there seemed to be some sort of "line-iness" problem with the confocal. I went up to investigate and saw that something seeemed a little weird with how their time series images looked, generally when you went from image to image. It seemed like maybe it could be due to a very subtle laser flicker, so that individual rows of pixels were slightly brighter or fainter than the ones in the same spot on the next image. Since they use pseudocolor to detect very subtle changes in fluorescence, it is more noticeable than it would be if they were not using pseudocolor.

I called Colleen who said she would make sure Steve Fryer stopped by when he was in town.

He stopped by on Thursday to check things out and he's not sure anything can be done. It was difficult to fully replicate the problem because Jason Weick didn't save the files in .ids format, but he got a sense of it. I think he thought that because we're talking pseudocolor, which is so sensitive, very subtle laser fluctuations can result in this effect. He mentioned another potential problem that is probably not the cause but would be of concern if it was. I can't recall what it was, but something like the laser stabilizer or something like that.

Meanwhile, we set up for him to come clean the system thoroughly once a year, piggy-backed onto some scopes at the vet school that are cleaned annually and will be serviced within the next few weeks. Steve Fryer emailed me to ask how the week of November 5 looked for coming out and I said it was wide open. Hopefully, we'll draw up an agreement that we'll be serviced annually and save money on travel expenses by doing it at the same time as other campus scopes.