Dog Dander

Transmitted Phase Contrast Illumination

Dog skin flakes tend to be about three times or more as long as they are wide. In indoor tapelift samples they can be confussed with very fine wood sawdust particles but the wood sawdust particles almost always contain cell structure of distictive fibril structure at the edges that distinguish the sawdust from the dog dander. Sawdust has a much higher birefringence than dog dander and so can easily be distinguished when viewed with crossed polarized light.