Brightfield microscopy provides low contrast images of transparent biological specimens and therefore few details can be seen. A good way to increase contrast in brightfield microscopy is to stain the specimens. However, the available colors are often toxic to living cells; with a phase-contrast light microscope, the structures of many types of biological specimens can be viewed with greater contrast without the need to stain the specimen. This contrast technique takes advantage of the different optical densities of the structures of a specimen, which result in a phase shift of the light that comes into contact with the specimen and its structures.
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