MVLScopeMicroscopy Virtual LabA journey into the unseen
Discover it with MVLscope: interactive lessons,
virtual microscopes and puzzles to explore.
Bring your curiosity. Explore at your own pace.
Discover hidden shapes, surprising surfaces and playful microscope mysteries.
Tiny World · No sign-up02 / START LEARNINGSee how a signal becomes an image.
Interactive lessons · At your pace03 / GET HANDS-ONExplore the controls. Practise a workflow.
Students · Researchers · EducatorsNEW / AN INTERACTIVE NATURE EXHIBIT
Look inside a wing. Change the gaps between its tiniest layers and watch a different colour emerge.
Discover the butterfly’s secretInteractive 3D · A Morpho-inspired design model
No sign-up. Follow your curiosity.
CHANGE A STRUCTURE. CHANGE A COLOUR. ↗NEW / MICROSCOPY CASE FILES
Why does a lotus leaf let water and dirt go? Try a drop, look beneath the surface and build an explanation from your evidence.
Open the case fileCase 001 · The leaf that refuses to get wet
About 5–8 minutes · Original interactive models
OBSERVE. COMPARE. MAKE YOUR CASE. ↗CHOOSE AN INSTRUMENT
Enter a lab, explore how it works,
or watch a recorded lesson.
LIGHT
Follow the light path, acquire images, and diagnose focus, signal and sampling problems.
Planned extensionsPolarized light · Light-sheet · Super-resolutionComing soon
Enter LFM labPROBE
Scan a surface and connect probe shape and feedback settings to the measured image.
Enter AFM labELECTRONS + IONS
Explore scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and focused ion beam (FIB) milling. Prepare a virtual thin specimen section, called a lamella.
Enter SEM / FIB labELECTRONS
Explore the column, specimen loading, beam alignment and image formation.
Enter TEM labLIGHT
Reconstruct a surface from interference signals and measure step height.
Enter optical profiler labPREPARE & INSPECT
Preserve the evidence before imaging. Explore the principles, then choose a materials, SEM, TEM/FIB or biological preparation workflow.
Explore sample preparationAll online laboratories are free to use, with no MVLscope account required. Optional live AI voice and chat need your own OpenAI API key and may incur OpenAI charges. About JANA and AI usage. Each lab opens in another tab so you can keep your current work. New to a microscope? Start with How it works, then explore the lab. Video lessons are optional.
FUTURE LABORATORIES / PLANNED
We plan to expand MVLscope with labs for chemical mapping, internal 3D structure and atomic-scale surface imaging.
What is it made of?
Explore how Raman spectra identify materials and reveal where different chemical components occur across a specimen.
What is hidden inside?
Learn how X-ray projections combine into a 3D volume to reveal internal structures, pores and defects without cutting the specimen open.
What does an atomic surface reveal?
Explore scanning tunnelling microscopy: how tunnelling current reveals atomic-scale detail and surface electronic structure on conducting and semiconducting materials.
These laboratories are planned and are not yet available. No release dates have been announced.
01 / Change your perspective
Five stops through scale.
A different way to see at every step.
JANA / SCALE NOTES
A cell contains a world of structures. Fluorescence helps distinguish selected features by the light they emit.
Explore light & fluorescence ↗These are comparative illustrations, not a continuous microscope zoom or measurements from a specimen.
Loading the 3D view when it comes into view. You can explore scale using the controls.
02 / Make a discovery
Move through a fluorescent specimen. Separate its channels. Notice what appears—and what disappears.
JANA asks
When a feature disappears, has it gone—or are you looking at a different depth?
CONFOCAL / SYNTHETIC CELLSZ 0.0 µmMove through depth. Watch structures sharpen, soften, or leave the optical section.
Same XY field · fixed display scale · synthetic teaching preview
03 / Follow the light
Open the shutter. Follow the light.
See what each component does.
Explore the LFM simulator’s interactive microscope.
Loads on demand. Drag to orbit; view controls are also available.
The fluorescence journey
Generic teaching model adapted from the LFM simulator. Geometry and light paths are simplified; motion is enlarged for learning. This homepage preview does not capture images or change your lab session.
BUILD YOUR UNDERSTANDING
Start with the basics or pick a question.
Each lesson gives you something to try.
START HERE / INTRODUCTORY EXPERIENCE
Meet a world smaller than a strand of hair. Rotate 3D models, turn light into an image, and discover which microscope answers your question. JANA guides you from the very beginning.
Make your first discoverySCALE → SIGNAL → DISCOVERY
Close a shutter and the detector goes dark. Bring a specimen into focus. Compare light, electrons and a scanning tip. Every interaction explains a principle.
EXPLORE / HOW AN IMAGE FORMS
Step inside a cutaway optical bench. Follow a point into its image, move focus through three layers, and discover why more depth can mean less detail.
Move focus. Watch the image change. EXPLORE / MAKE STRESS VISIBLE
Press a clear strip. Reveal interference colours with polarized light. Change the load or rotate a filter and discover why colour alone cannot tell you the stress.
Press here. Make a discovery.
Your touch changes the light. EXPLORE / ONE SPECIMEN, DIFFERENT MICROSCOPES
Follow the same region of a diatom’s silica shell through light, scanning electron, atomic force and transmission electron microscopy. Watch light, electrons and a scanning tip reveal different evidence, then prepare a thin section to look through its wall.
Explore the diatomPATTERN / SURFACE / HEIGHT / SECTION
Move the SEM detector. Change the AFM tip. Discover why a brighter pixel is not a height measurement—and why specimen preparation matters.
LESSON 01
Follow the light in 3D. Enlarge two fluorescent points, open the objective aperture, and discover what actually reveals detail.
Start lesson 01SAME 300 nm PAIR / 520 nm EMISSION
NA means numerical aperture: a measure of the objective’s light-gathering angle and medium.
A smaller Rayleigh reference distance means closer features can meet the criterion. Display zoom alone leaves it unchanged.
LESSON 02
Move through a 3D fluorescent specimen. Find a sharp plane, trade depth for detail, and collect the layers a single image misses.
Start lesson 02SAME SPECIMEN / AIR / 520 nm
A wider numerical aperture makes the diffraction depth reference thinner. Explore which layers stay near focus, and which contribute blurred light.
LESSON 03
Turn image pixels into specimen dimensions. Calibrate a 3D micrometer slide, measure a fibre, and correct the error caused by an objective change.
Start lesson 03ONE 30 µm FIBRE / TWO CALIBRATIONS
The specimen did not grow. Discover why calibration must match the objective and camera setup before reporting a measurement.
LESSON 04
Follow excitation and emission in 3D. Compare exposure and spectral selection, reveal camera clipping, and adjust the settings to avoid clipping.
Start lesson 04SAME FOCUSED SPECIMEN / DIFFERENT COLLECTION
Relative contrast S/(S+B) at 30% excitation and 300 ms in this teaching model. More exposure alone leaves the ratio unchanged.
LESSON 05 / NEW
Discover when more pixels help. Follow the image onto a named 3D detector, expose aliasing, compare binning and test what digital enlargement can really reveal.
Start lesson 05SAME 40× OBJECTIVE / 6.5 µm CAMERA PIXELS
At NA 0.75 and 520 nm, the ideal widefield sampling target is at most 0.1733 µm per specimen pixel. Screen enlargement leaves sampling unchanged.
YOUR FIRST INDEPENDENT EXPERIMENT / NEW
Choose an objective, find focus, capture fluorescent beads, verify the scale and report a measured distance. JANA guides your first attempt; independent mode saves feedback until submission.
Start the LFM experimentFROM CONCEPT TO EVIDENCE
Your submitted record preserves the captured image, optical settings, calibration, measurement and explanation. Revisit the lessons whenever you need a refresher.
The five numbered light-microscopy lessons include guided experiments, research notes and a record saved in your browser. Each introductory experience connects you to a relevant lab for further practice.
BUILD & DISCOVER
Place an objective, choose a camera and make your first image. Compare how the same specimen changes with your design.
Open Microscope Maker →CONTINUE THE FOUNDATIONS / LESSONS 06–12
Seven more lessons. Try a setting, compare observations, and carry the idea into a virtual lab.
Build an electron budget, separate noise sources, and discover why a brighter camera image can contain no more evidence.
Explore the lesson →Build a signed ray picture, pair object and image planes, and discover why microscope objectives depend on the rest of the optical system.
Explore the lesson →Separate focus errors from spherical, chromatic, and field-dependent aberrations, then test whether a correction addresses the cause.
Explore the lesson →Connect space, time and photon energy; then test how a medium, an optical power setting and an objective change the comparison.
Explore the lesson →Track light, fluorescence, electrons and probe forces from the specimen interaction to the detector. Learn what a signal can — and cannot — establish.
Explore the lesson →Compare signals, specimen preparation, living processes, scale and practical constraints. Build a measurement plan and choose relevant MVLscope labs.
Explore the lesson →Is that pore real? Section a virtual specimen, compare preparation artifacts and keep the evidence.
Explore the lesson →Start with Lesson 01 for the full sequence, or open the concept you need. Chapter settings and saved comparisons stay in your browser.
05 / New perspectives
Selected research, 2024–2025.
New ideas are changing what we can observe.
A single expansion step enlarged preserved cells and tissues about twentyfold in each dimension, revealing nanoscale biological details with conventional confocal microscopes.
Read the research — Single-shot 20-fold expansion microscopy, Nature MethodsNature Methods · Expansion microscopyRapid electron scanning and computational reconstruction revealed atomic details at fragile perovskite edges, showing what carefully controlled electron dose can make possible.
Read the research — Atomically resolved edges and defects in lead halide perovskites, NatureNature · Low-dose electron imagingA seesaw-shaped probe separated mechanical hinges from its reflective surface, improving deflection sensitivity and capturing proteins and DNA structures in liquid.
Read the research — A high signal-to-noise ratio and high-frequency seesaw cantilever for high-speed atomic force microscopy, Nature CommunicationsNature Communications · Probe designThese are published research advances. They are not claims that MVLscope reproduces these methods.
Your next discovery starts with a question.
JANA guides your journey with preset explanations and optional AI conversations in the labs. How JANA works.
JANA / DISCOVERY WINDOW
What becomes easier to distinguish when you separate the signals?
Choose a channel to follow DNA or actin labels through the same synthetic cell field.
Illustrative cell outlines · not a measured specimen.
PASS ON A MOMENT OF DISCOVERY
Share a lesson with a student, colleague or instructor. Invite them to change one control and explain what happens.
