Digital microscopy has created a lot of buzz in the field of microscopy and there are some facts that are useful to know. We have been often asked about digital microscopes by users familiar with the traditional stereo and compound microscopes. Here are comprehensive answers to the most frequent and important questions.
A digital microscope is an optical microscope equipped with a digital camera, but there are no eyepieces. An image of the sample is observed and analyzed directly on an electronic monitor display. Conventional stereo or compound microscopes that have eyepieces, but are also equipped with a digital camera, may be used in a similar manner as digital microscopes. Many digital microscopes are able to save with the recorded image data information about the microscope and camera parameters. For the remainder of this article, we will use the term “digital microscopes” to refer only to microscopes without eyepieces having a digital camera. Stereo or compound microscopes with eyepieces and equipped with digital cameras are not considered for the answers below.