TweezPal – Optical tweezers analysis and calibration software

Abstract

Optical tweezers, a powerful tool for optical trapping, micromanipulation and force transduction, have in recent years become a standard technique commonly used in many research laboratories and university courses. Knowledge about the optical force acting on a trapped object can be gained only after a calibration procedure which has to be performed (by an expert) for each type of trapped objects. In this paper we present TweezPal, a user-friendly, standalone Windows software tool for optical tweezers analysis and calibration. Using TweezPal, the procedure can be performed in a matter of minutes even by non-expert users. The calibration is based on the Brownian motion of a particle trapped in a stationary optical trap, which is being monitored using video or photodiode detection. The particle trajectory is imported into the software which instantly calculates position histogram, trapping potential, stiffness and anisotropy.
The program can be as well used to determine any potential field (magnetic, electric, elastic...) acting on motion of particles. Tweezpal will calculate the shape of arbitrary potential from any particle trajectory.

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    TweezPal.zip - Archive containing: Windows Executable and two sample data sets
Please cite as

N. Osterman, Computer Physics Communications, Volume 181, Issue 11, November 2010, Pages 1911–1916

DOI:10.1016/j.cpc.2010.07.024