August 2017

Coral skeletons are made up of the mineral Aragonite, which typically has needle and fan shaped crystals. The nanozoomer microscope typically has light paths for brightfield and fluorescence modalities. In this image, we have created a new modality in this system by utilizing a set of a polarizer and analyzer in the brightfield path at an orientation which is not typically used in polarized microscopy (crossed nicols). An addition of another 90 degree rotation provides both brightfield as well as polarization like image which provide an isotropic visualization of all crystals partially illuminated by brightfield light and the rest showing polarization extinctions illustrated by a range of colors.