The proven technology of the world's only fully automated stepping stage for POL microscopes allows accurate traversal of a slide, revisiting points even after re-mounting a slide, and cataloguing objects found, either manually picked or automatically detected.

During an automated pass across the whole slide, PetroBugs reconciles partial objects that span multiple Fields of View.

It then categorises the objects - in this case into AOM, vitrinite and enclosed kerogen - in this case, within a semi-transparent yellow miospore.

Note that the miospore is identified as a single object when the same slide is traversed in UV light and PetroBugs matches the plane light and UV light positions.

The image seen by a camera attached to the microscope can be scanned for material which PetroBugs categorises into classes of Amorphous Organic Matter (AOM), kerogen types, and candidate Biostratigraphic material.

This then allows traversal of a slide visiting only these objects, for manual identification and categorisation.

Nannofossil analysts collect multiple z-plane images to build up a 3D view. PetroBugs allows these z-planes to be accessed in a variety of ways, including via our Magic Mouse™ which allows a user-selectable region of the image to be scrolled in the z-plane independently of the remainder of the image.