Biology is one of the oldest of the sciences, but traditionally not one of the most quantitative. Today, new chemistries allow molecular imaging – and quantitative measurement – of phenomena inside living cells. Many commercially available fluorescent assay reagents can be used to measure local concentrations of specific target molecules. Tool engineering needs to catch up, though, if the new fluorescent probes are to reach their full potential.

The process of getting the numbers often involves - inordinately complex hand-operated post-experiment software processing - consumption of large amounts of expensive material - undesirable limitations on the amount or kind of data that can be taken.

These necessities are the mothers of the invention we call Visual Servoing Optical Microscopy, or VSOM™.