Page "Microscopy" Paragraph 20

Dark field microscopy is a technique for improving the contrast of unstained, transparent specimens.

Dark field illumination uses a carefully aligned light source to minimize the quantity of directly-transmitted ( unscattered ) light entering the image plane, collecting only the light scattered by the sample.

Dark field can dramatically improve image contrast – especially of transparent objects – while requiring little equipment setup or sample preparation.

However, the technique suffers from low light intensity in final image of many biological samples, and continues to be affected by low apparent resolution.