MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

I purchased an omax 2500x led 5mp usb microscope this weeekend on amazon for about 500$ canadian and includes a book some slides and other tools, its a compound microscope, i need to know if I'll be able to study sample toe nail cultures with it or do i need a stereo microscope? please let me know before monday so I can change my order if i ordered the wrong microscope type thanks

Compound microscope is designed to examine mounted specimens on a slide. For example, genital wart would have to be tissue processed, sectioned, stained and mounted on a slide. Fungus culture would have to be also mounted on a slide. If you are planning to examine large (1mm and larger) tissue and fungus samples, unstinted and unmounted, you need stereo microscope.

should I change my order now then to a stereo microscope?? or simply take the time to mount them with a drop of water or die and cut them small enough to fit in the slide?

There is more to sectioning than you might think:

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1981

so if i buy a stereo microscope i don't have to section if I understand but will magnification of up to 60X be enough to study the samples for meaningful data? the compound goes to 2500X in the same price range

Perhaps if you gave us some background - why are you doing this, what meaningful data, why have you not sorted all this out first before buying a microscope?

Well I don't have any medical research background but i have a computer IT background thats why I ordered a USB 5MP camera because I want to store the images on my computer and compare them to books or online references for analysis, as far as the nail, i have a toe nail that was extracted by a doctor about 25 years ago and never grew back normal and they told me i dont have fungus so again i want to take a culture so its more for myself as a learning and possibly help treat the problems by talking to my doctors about the results I find.

I kind of rushed into buying the microscope because it was a spontaneous idea that I had over the weekend that I wanted to try, didn't realize the options available

I would suggest cancelling your order and getting your money back.
I would also suggest talking with someone with a "medical" background about the feasibility of your "project".
If you are unhappy with your doctor find another one.

why? I want to discover new things, why are you discouraging me? I see newbies posting pictures of their setup which is OMAX as well and you welcomed them with open arms. What if I want to look at blood samples and learn different things about plants and such?

75RR wrote:I would suggest cancelling your order and getting your money back.
I would also suggest talking with someone with a "medical" background about the feasibility of your "project".
If you are unhappy with your doctor find another one.

100% agreed.

Compound OR sereomicroscope are not going to be very useful to you.

I am a medical microbiologist and pharmacist. What you want to do is financially and logistically very difficult for any single individual without a professional lab.

Even for someone like myself (who has doctoral degree in microbiology/virology/immunology), your goal is difficult, without at least $3000 for reagents (antibody / ELISA kits), equipements such as an ELISA machine and a few months.

A cheaper way to do it, is getting a degree in medical virology and work in a medical diagnostic lab. Then try to do some DIY in a weekend with your pro equipments and reagents.

starguy75 wrote:why? I want to discover new things, why are you discouraging me? I see newbies posting pictures of their setup which is OMAX as well and you welcomed them with open arms. What if I want to look at blood samples and learn different things about plants and such?

If you want to use the microscope as a hobby tool, by all means. However it seems like you intend to attempt to perform diasgnostic tests on yourself. Your post about identifying the strain of HPV makes very littl sence. You don't use optical microscopes to study viruses, and strain of a virus is identified by methods completely different from microscopy. These days viral genomes are sequenced for strain identification. Are you planning to purchase NGS instrument? Technically you could do it on Sanger CE instrument, but it will take longer, and you will have to do allot og cloning.
In any case, if you want to study blood samples, plants etc, go ahead, but culturing fungi and trying to ID HPV strain, leave it to your medical profssionals.
...and lastly, no optical microscope will produce 2500x magnification. It is physically impossible. Your resolving magnification theoretical limit is about 2000x, but practically it is about 1400-1600x. Everything above is empty magnification. Things will look larger, but no new details are revealed.

zzffnn wrote:I am a medical microbiologist and pharmacist. What you want to do is financially and logistically very difficult for any single individual without a professional lab.

Even for someone like myself (who has doctoral degree in microbiology/virology/immunology), your goal is difficult, without at least $5000 and a few months.

A cheaper way to do it, is getting a degree in medical technology in the medical virology and work in a medical diagnostic lab.

I am a molecular biologist and genetisist (MS, MD/PhD), and I could not do it with $5000 budget. Even if you have fully equipped lab, just consumables alone will run you more than that.

Oktagon wrote:

zzffnn wrote:I am a medical microbiologist and pharmacist. What you want to do is financially and logistically very difficult for any single individual without a professional lab.

Even for someone like myself (who has doctoral degree in microbiology/virology/immunology), your goal is difficult, without at least $5000 and a few months.

A cheaper way to do it, is getting a degree in medical technology in the medical virology and work in a medical diagnostic lab.

I don't think $5000 will do it. Even if you have fully equipped lab, just consumables alone will run you more than that.

It depends on what the goal is. Just to see how severe the disease (viral load or tissue damage) is, maybe a tissue ELISA or blood immunology test can do it, assuming you have a lab.

But my estimates were very conservative indeed.

Exact ID or morphological studies would cost more for sure.

Finding a good doctor and treating the disease is actually the cheapest and most effective solution.

zzffnn wrote:

Oktagon wrote:

zzffnn wrote:I am a medical microbiologist and pharmacist. What you want to do is financially and logistically very difficult for any single individual without a professional lab.

Even for someone like myself (who has doctoral degree in microbiology/virology/immunology), your goal is difficult, without at least $5000 and a few months.

A cheaper way to do it, is getting a degree in medical technology in the medical virology and work in a medical diagnostic lab.

I don't think $5000 will do it. Even if you have fully equipped lab, just consumables alone will run you more than that.

It depends on what the goal is. Just to see how severe the disease (viral load or tissue damage) is, maybe a tissue ELISA or blood immunology test can do it, assuming you have a lab.

But my estimates were very conservative indeed.

I would do viral load by qPCR. But for strain ID, unless you already have stain specific probes you would either run HPV microarray, or sequence the virus.

Heck, I'd just have to say that if you do not yet understand the difference between a stereo scope and compound scope, it ain't time to plunk down $$$ yet.

Get whatever test/doctor/medicine that medical insurance covers. Depending on pathogens / medical guidelines /cost benefit ratio, insurance may cover some tests/procedures but not others, be it qPCR (which can indeed be more sensitive) or immuno assay.

We can write a review article about HPV diagnosis and compare/contrast each method, but it is not going to help the OP. OP needs to find a good infectious disease MD that is covered by his insurance.

zzffnn wrote:. OP needs to find a good infectious disease MD that is covered by his insurance.

+100

starguy75 wrote:why? I want to discover new things, why are you discouraging me? I see newbies posting pictures of their setup which is OMAX as well and you welcomed them with open arms. What if I want to look at blood samples and learn different things about plants and such?

I was on the verge of doing what you did - plunking $ down on a sparkling brand new Chinese microscope. Some of these same guys along with a host of others here discouraged me from completing those plans with a lot of tips I'm hearing over again in this thread.

Boy am I glad for their professional experienced input.