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About Confocal NL

Looking beyond what’s known to innovate and find the best solutions for our customers

Our mission & vision

At Confocal NL, we empower researchers to advance live cell imaging by providing the most cell-friendly and intuitive confocal microscopy systems. Our technology preserves cell physiology and increases the reproducibility of results as it minimizes laser-induced damage.

We envision a future where live-cell imaging is central to life science discoveries. Confocal NL is dedicated to accelerate breakthroughs, reduce development costs, and enable deeper biological insights with greater reproducibility.

Our core values

Curious

We look beyond what’s known to innovate and find the best solutions.

Proactive

We are in constant movement to strive for the best solutions for our customers.

Cooperative

Each team member has an added value, and together, we strive for the best experience for our users.

Customer focused

We ensure that customers have a pleasant experience with us and our solutions.

The inventors

Confocal NL was founded in 2016, by Erik Manders and Peter Drent. The concept of RCM was born three years earlier from a PhD project at the University of Amsterdam, financed by Dutch Research Council NWO through their STW Perspectief.

Erik and his team of optics researchers with Giulia de Luca as lead researcher developed the innovative and disruptive REscan confocal technique. The concept and outcomes were published in 2013 (De Luca et al., 2013).

The technology

REscan Confocal Microscopy (RCM) is a super resolution technique based on a standard confocal extended with an optical re-scanning unit that projects the image directly on a CCD or sCMOS camera (Luca et al., 2013).

By using a sensitive camera as a detector, the quantum efficiency (QE) of RCM increases up to 95% in the visible range of light (VIS) and 67% in near-infrared (NIR) light. Traditional point scanning confocal systems use Photomultiplier Tubes (PMTs) as a detector. The sensitivity of a PMT is maximum 45%. RCM strongly increases sensitivity while maintaining the confocal sectioning capability. The REscan technology allows the development of images with a 40% increase in resolution, without closing the pinhole. Therefore, more photons are captured, and the signal-to-noise ratio is four times higher in RCM than in standard PMT-based confocal microscopes. This results in 170 nm resolution images with an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio. Combining RCM with deconvolution, the resolution is further improved to 120 nm.

Investors & Supporters

In 2016, with the support from UvA Ventures & Holding, Confocal NL was founded to commercialize RCM. Hereafter, microscopy facilities worldwide started incorporating our technology, which stimulated the further growth of Confocal NL.

A second milestone for Confocal NL was facilitated by Value Creation Capital (VCC) in 2018. Their investment made it possible to expand our team and pursue further product and technology development. 

The growing position of Confocal NL in biology science, made ECFG Venture Capital join, investing in scaling the company for global growth and further technology development.

Currently, UvA Ventures, VCC, ROM InWest and ECFG are the main investors. 

Testimonials

Satisfied researchers
around the globe

“
Prof. Hei Ming LaiChinese University of Hong Kong

“The NL5 allowed us to image 500 μm deep into cleared brain tissue samples with a high-signal-to-noise ratio, something that was difficult to achieve with other techniques.
This, in combination with its gentle imaging capabilities, high acquisition speed, and intuitive interface, made it possible to easily observe our samples.”

“
Prof. Erwin PetermanFaculty of Science, Physics of Living Systems, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

“The NL5 has enabled us to image deep in different parts of the C.elegans that we could not so far measure properly.”

“
Gabor CsucsETH Zürich

“RCM is a very easy to use system that we have in combination with STORM and it provides great underlay images for STORM data.”

“
Dr. Yannick LeursChemical Biology, Eindhoven University of Technology

“The NL5+ has been instrumental in advancing our studies. It allowed us to image our samples quickly and deeply with very low laser power, providing consistent, high-quality imaging.”

Team

Meet our team

Pim Vos

CEO

Erdal Demir

CCO

Christoph van der Reijden

CTO

Paul Steeman

CFO

Rea Dou

Global Sales Manager

Dušan Popov-Čeleketić

Global Product Manager

Anna Fehér

Sales Engineer

Margarida Dantas

Product Application Specialist

Casper Penning

Operations Coordinator

Mechelle Dela Cruz-Lookman

Finance & Office Manager

Jill Kuipers

Finance Controller

Florian Sterl

Optics Engineer

Jornel van den Hoorn

Mechatronics Engineer

Alex Dekker

Software Engineer

Youri Moll

Software Engineer

Dennis Kooijman

Service Engineer

Diego Swagerman

Service Engineer

Aron Opheij

Optics Engineer

Our partners globally

We have partnered with key distributors to promote our disruptive technology globally and to help researchers.

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