Overview of STED Module
Alba v5 can be upgraded to the Alba STED with the addition of the STED module. The Alba STED uses the pulsed excitation and pulsed depletion approach (pSTED) in combination with the FastFLIM to record the lifetime of fluorophores at each pixel of the image; using the phasor plot the photons emitted by the fluorophores activated by the excitation laser only (inherent fluorescence decay) are efficiently separated from the photons emitted by the fluorophores partially or fully activated by the STED laser (featuring shorter decay times). Moreover, the combination of pSTED and lifetime analysis through the phasor plot allows to separate two fluorophores featuring similar emission patterns but having different decay times (dual label excitation).