Forum - GRIN lens status

I received the same email response from them. We are looking 2.0mm lenses of at least 5mm.

They now said they'd forward the inquiry to Inscopix. So maybe they sell bare lenses. If not, we might have to change to two-photon, then we could buy from Grintech.

Hi Mlippert,

From what I understand, Doric use to use Grintech lenses but has switched over to GoFoton lenses due to Inscopix blocking their supply. I have heard they, and their users, are not too thrilled with the GoFoton lenses and have the same issues with them as we do. For now the only place you can get thin lenses seems to be Inscopix. If you have access to a lab that uses Inscopix scopes and can get your hands on some of their Inscopix relay lenses then you can use them in our system, Imaging With Thing GRIN Lenses.

Auptain,

For larger (1.8mm or 2mm) GRIN lenses there may be another way you can get them. For anyone interested, contact me at DBAharoni@gmail.com and I will give you more information.

It's a bit offtopic but I find the behaviour of Inscopix in this regard very strange, if they really were to block the supply. Since when do scientist-run companies actively try to dissuade other scientists? I guess we can be happy that FHC didn't get a monopoly on tungsten wire :-) It's not like I'm gonna open a company selling Inscopix-clones or anything. I just want to do my research. I really hope there is a way of buying the lenses through Inscopix, as Omnetics plugs were once sold through Plexon. We actually do have the Doric system, and yes, the lenses are an issue. But even the relatively long ones we got from them are not too bad. My main goal is to make some prism probes, as we have quite some problems getting good cells. Depending on the region we see them but they don't do much. One of the hopes is that in deeper layers (with prism) we could see more activity, do less damage in the direction of imaging and also that we can get some deeper working distance. The Doric implants are at 80 µm in front of the lens, and that can easily be within the damage zone still. As I understand it, Inscopix focusses at 250 µm in front of the endface, correct? If Doric uses Gofoton, can the lenses be directly bought at Gofoton as well? On their page I basically only see blanks to assemble and polish by hand. What's the price range for these lenses at Gofoton?

Hi Mlippert,

It is really frustrating that Grintech claims their strategic sales partnership with Inscopix is "to better serve the neuroscience research community" while in actuality it seems to be in place specifically to do the opposite. Many people feel the same way as you. Maybe more attention could be brought to this issue if people publicly communicated to Inscopix over twitter or similar.

We have played around a bit with prisms attached to GRIN lenses (all from Grintech before we were cut off) with very promising results. Prisms effectively increase your working distance by the size of the prism, requiring a custom GRIN lens to shift the focal plane this additional distance.

From my understanding Inscopix scopes have a range of about 200um in front of the GRIN lens. This range is adjustable with a threaded focusing mechanism near the top of their scopes. The optics of our Miniscopes have the capability of imaging deeper than Inscopix scopes but will be limited to a maximum of 200um to 300um due to fluorescence light being scattered by the tissue (independent of which scope you use). The Miniscope also allows you to adjust the depth of the focal plane by using the sliding focus mechanism the CMOS PCB is attached to. We find our focusing mechanism much easier to use than the approach Inscopix has taken. Being able to adjust the focal plane is incredibly important to initially finding cells and is possibly one of the drawbacks of the Doric system.

You should be able to get lenses from GoFoton directly and they can also cut lenses to the lengths you need. You can either request a specific pitch or specific working distance. Their pricing is very reasonable.

I tried to get a quote for the Grintech lenses from Inscopix last week. The sales rep told me they will not sell lenses to be used in scopes that compete with theirs.

Hi, I'm building a mini microscope using GRIN lenses, and we have 1.8 mm, .25 pitch lenses. But we aren't sure about how 1.8 mm and 2 mm lenses are different, and I haven't been able to find any 2.0 mm, .25 pitch GRIN lenses. Do you know where you can buy these bare lenses? And what the difference between 1.8 mm and 2.0 mm GRIN lenses is? Thank you, Ryan

Hi Ryan, There doesn't seem to be a difference in quality of imaging between the two lenses. Just that the 2mm is slightly larger in diameter but gives similar imaging quality to the 1.8. We are working towards a solution outside of Grintech and Inscopix and believe we are very close to developing a new grin lens that will be commercially available soon. We will post this information on the Wiki as soon as it is available. Thank you!

Ok thank you.