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Canadian scientists are part of an elite handful of experts in the world who have access to a new microscope that is believed to be one of the most powerful ever developed.

The microscope's capabilities represent the most significant and potentially groundbreaking developments in the technology in decades, and could lead to major breakthroughs in the understanding of how cancer, birth defects and other health problems form.

There are only three optical microscopy experimental microscopes in the world. One of them is now being used by scientists at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

The microscope, which has an estimated cost of $600,000, arrived about two weeks ago.

Laurence Pelletier, the research institute's principal investigator, was chosen by the manufacturer to fine-tune its technology before it is made more accessible to the scientific community.

"We can basically see things we couldn't before," Dr. Pelletier said. "I think the possibilities are endless."

The microscope allows scientists to study live cells with unprecedented precision. Strong imaging and resolution capabilities are two of the most crucial elements that can help scientists observe the structure of cells, how they move in relation to one another and what may lead a cell to mutate and become cancerous.

But for more than a decade, technological advances have been "incremental" at best, Dr. Pelletier said.

"In the last maybe 10, 15 years, [we had] reached pretty much a bottleneck in resolution and efficiency," he said.

Although electron microscopes can produce very high resolutions, they can only be used to observe specimens that are dead, which is of limited use to scientists trying to understand how cells function.

Now, with the OMX microscope, scientists have an unprecedented ability to observe live cells.

One of the most significant aspects of the OMX microscope is that its resolution is two times higher than other standard light microscopes. Although the increase may not sound like much, the difference is "amazing" and allows scientists to see aspects of a cell and its functions more clearly than ever before, Dr. Pelletier said.

"It really blows out of the water all of the advances that have been made so far by basically beating the laws of physics by a factor of two," Dr. Pelletier said. "The more resolution, the better quality of images, the better you can understand what's going wrong."

The microscope is also equipped with four high-sensitivity cameras that can each take up to 25 frames a second. That kind of development will help scientists study cell processes in great detail, Dr. Pelletier said.

The research institute has only had the OMX microscope for about two weeks, but scientists have already made discoveries that demonstrate the potential breakthroughs the technology may eventually lead to. For instance, Dr. Pelletier and his colleagues examined one of their most well-documented organelles under the microscope and noticed new details of its structure they were unable to see before.

The OMX microscope is poised to open a new world of understanding by helping scientists unlock the mysteries of how cells function, which will hopefully shed light on the processes that lead to certain diseases.

"We need to really understand how they work. The tools that we currently have are very helpful, but they're limited," Dr. Pelletier said. "[The] OMX will just open doors wide open."