Live Cell Imaging
With the variety of fluorescent proteins and multicolored probes that have been developed, it is now possible to label virtually any molecule. The ability to visualize protein dynamics in vesicles, organelles, cells, and tissues has provided new insights into how cells function in healthy and disease states. These insights include the spatiotemporal dynamics of processes like mitosis, embryonic development, and cytoskeleton changes.
When studying live cells, common obstacles include phototoxicity and photodamage. To capture fast biological processes, it is crucial to keep the cells healthy and obtain crisp images for reliable data that are free of artifacts. Live‐cell microscopy often requires a compromise between image quality and cell health. During imaging, certain environmental conditions must be maintained to avoid changes in the cells.
A variety of high-performance Leica imaging solutions can overcome these challenges for live-cell imaging enabling new information for cellular physiology and dynamics to be discovered.
Our experts on solutions for live cell imaging applications are happy to help you with their advice.
Cell Viability & Dynamics During Imaging
Leica Microsystems provides you with intelligent innovations in live-cell imaging. Our solutions help you get the best image quality while protecting your samples.
Most cellular processes occur in 3 dimensions over time. Therefore, cells need to be imaged in four dimensions (XYZ and time) to obtain a complete picture. Time‐lapse imaging is used to capture cell events over timescales from seconds to months. Repeated imaging of cells at particular points in time is also possible. To protect cell viability during this process, live-cell imaging requires the temperature, pH, and humidity to be kept under control. Light exposure should also be at a minimum to avoid phototoxicity.
Leica Microsystems offers imaging solutions that help optimize your study of live cells, even over long periods of time. They provide the necessary image contrast and resolution to facilitate the analysis of dynamic events. Some Leica systems also enable high-speed imaging, so no key cellular events are missed.
Your Live Cell Imaging Needs
To perform successful live-cell imaging experiments, using the right platform is critical. When choosing an optical microscope for live‐cell imaging, the following 3 variables should be considered: detector sensitivity (signal‐to‐noise ratio), specimen viability, and image-acquisition speed.
Methods suitable for live-cell applications enable visualization of the dynamics without causing cell damage, as it can affect the results.
Live‐cell imaging is mainly performed with fluorescence microscopy. Widefield microscopy, providing flexible excitation and fast acquisition, is typically used to visualize cell dynamics and development over long times. Confocal microscopy is typically used to study subcellular dynamic events. Multiphoton microscopy alllows excitation with longer wavelength light reducing photobleaching and extending cell viability. Finally, fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) can be applied to study fast dynamic signaling events in cells.
Leica Microsystems offers the latest innovations in widefield and confocal imaging technologies for fast 3D live cell imaging with the THUNDER Imagers, STELLARIS confocal platform, and FLIM.
Live Cell Imaging Products
Filter by Area of Application
STELLARIS
With the STELLARIS confocal platform, we have re-imagined confocal microscopy to get you closer to the truth.
K5
sCMOS Microscope Camera
THUNDER Imager Model Organism
The THUNDER Imager Model Organism allows fast and easy 3D exploration of whole organisms for developmental or molecular biology research.
STELLARIS DLS
Discover new applications by combining confocal and light-sheet microscopy
THUNDER Imager Live Cell & 3D Cell Culture & 3D Assay
THUNDER Imagers provide you with a solution for advanced 3D cell culture assays, whether you want to study stem cells, spheroids, or organoids.
THUNDER Imager Tissue
The THUNDER Imager Tissue allows real-time fluorescence imaging of 3D tissue sections typically used in neuroscience and histology research.
PAULA
Smart Cell Imager
STELLARIS 8 FALCON
FLIM Microscope
LAS X Life Science
Software platform for life science applications
DMi8 S Platform
For routine to live cell research
Infinity TIRF
Multicolor advanced TIRF module
Leica DMi1
Entry level inverted microscope
Leica DM IL LED
Inverted Laboratory Microscope with LED Illumination
Leica DFC365 FX
1.4 MP cooled monochrome camera for standard live cell imaging of GFP-expressing cells and tissues
About Live Cell Imaging
Besides the structural organization of cells or organs, dynamic processes are a major contributor to a functioning biological entity. Naturally, these processes can be best observed in living cells with non-invasive techniques like optical methods, collectively called “live-cell imaging” methods. Live-cell imaging covers all techniques where live cells are observed with microscopes – from the observation of embryogenesis with stereo microscopes, via cell growth studies with compound microscopes, until studies of physiological states of cells or cellular transport using fluorescent dyes or proteins. Although being highly demanding for both, experimenter and equipment (e.g. imaging systems, climate control), live-cell imaging techniques deliver results that are indispensable for present-day research.
Tracking Glomerular Fate Over Long Time Distances
Multi-channel multiphoton microscopy with dedicated optics for CLARITY. The glomerular filtration barrier (GFB) is a complex spatial structure within the kidney glomerulis where ultrafiltration…Read article
Fully Automated Tracking of Chloroplasts in Elodea Leaf Cells from 4D Image Data
Fully automated tracking of moving 3D structures in living cells represents several challenges that are typical to the analysis of biological image data. Taking 4D image data from chloroplasts in…Read article
Glucose-Stimulated Calcium Dynamics in Islets of Langerhans in Acute Mouse Pancreas Tissue Slices
In endocrine cells within islets of Langerhans calcium ions couple cell stimulation to hormone secretion. Since the advent of modern fluorimetry, numerous in vitro studies employing primarily isolated…Read article
Functional Connectivity in Islets of Langerhans from Mouse Pancreas Tissue Slices
We propose a network representation of electrically coupled beta cells in islets of Langerhans. Beta cells are functionally connected on the basis of correlations between calcium dynamics of…Read article
Novel Fluorescent Carbonic Nanomaterials for Sensing and Imaging
Small brightly fluorescent carbon nanoparticles have emerged as a new class of materials important for sensing and imaging applications. We analyze comparatively the properties of nanodiamonds,…Read article
The Relationship Between Membrane Potential and Calcium Dynamics in Glucose-Stimulated Beta Cell Syncytium in Acute Mouse Pancreas Tissue Slices
Oscillatory electrical activity is regarded as a hallmark of the pancreatic beta cell glucose-dependent excitability pattern. Electrophysiologically recorded membrane potential oscillations in beta…Read article
Live-Cell Imaging Evolves to Find New Niches
Since its introduction in the 1600s, improvements in microscope technology have continually broadened the types of cells and cellular processes that can be studied. Advances in automation have made…Read article
Euro-BioImaging – the pan-European Open Access Research Infrastructure Project for Biological and Medical Imaging Technologies
Euro‐BioImaging is a large‐scale pan‐European research infrastructure project on the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) Roadmap. Its mission is to build a distributed imaging…Read article
Patch Clamp Recordings from Embryonic Zebrafish Mauthner Cells
Mauthner cells (M-cells) are large reticulospinal neurons located in the hindbrain of teleost fish. They are key neurons involved in a characteristic behavior known as the C-start or escape response…Read article
Nobel Prize 2013 in Physiology or Medicine for Discoveries of the Machinery Regulating Vesicle Traffic
On October 7th 2013, The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 jointly to James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof…Read article
A Flip of the Mitotic Spindle has Disastrous Consequences for Epithelial Cells
Constructing a body is like building a house – if you compromise structural integrity, the edifice can collapse. Nowhere is that clearer on a cellular level than in the case of epithelial sheets,…Read article
From Dynamic Live Cell Imaging to 3D Ultrastructure: Novel Integrated Methods for High Pressure Freezing and Correlative Light-Electron Microscopy
To correlate dynamic events in adherent cells with both ultrastructural and 3D information, we developed a method for cultured cells that combines confocal time-lapse images of GFP-tagged proteins…Read article
Watching Molecule Movements in Live Cells
The newly developed STED-RICS microscopy method records rapid movements of molecules in live samples. By combining raster image correlation spectroscopy (RICS) with STED fluorescence microscopy,…Read article
Handbook of Optical Filters for Fluorescence Microscopy
Fluorescence microscopy and other light-based applications require optical filters that have demanding spectral and physical characteristics. Often, these characteristics are application-specific and…Read article
New Labeling Tools Can Help to Realize the Full Potential of Super-Resolution Microscopy
Since super-resolution microscopy techniques revolutionized the concept of light microscopy by overcoming the physical diffraction limit, STED microscopy and other super-resolution techniques have…Read article
A Precise and Rapid Mapping Protocol for Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy of small invertebrate organisms
CLEM (correlative live cell and electronmicroscopy) seeks to bridge the data acquired with different imaging strategies, typically between light microscopy and electron microscopy. It has been…Read article
Direct In Vivo Evidence for Tumor Propagation by Glioblastoma Cancer Stem Cells
Cancer research using multiphoton microscopy. High-grade gliomas (World Health Organization grade III anaplastic astrocytoma and grade IV glioblastoma multiforme), the most prevalent primary…Read article
Imaging Enzymes at Work
For the understanding of functions of proteins in biological and pathological processes, reporter molecules such as fluorescent proteins have become indispensable tools for visualizing the location of…Read article
Intravital Immunofluorescence for Visualizing the Microcirculatory and Immune Microenvironments in the Mouse Ear Dermis
Intravital imaging of inflammatory and remodeling processes has been an important area of research and has also motivated the creation of numerous transgenic reporter mouse models that express…Read article
Molecular Developmental Biology: Norwegian Marine Research Scientists Solve the Mysteries of Evolution
The human nervous system is an infinitely complex network consisting of some 100 billions of neurons. It is the result of many-faceted evolutionary processes spanning millions of years which, like the…Read article
Widefield Calcium Imaging with Calcium Indicator Fura2
In eukaryotic cells Ca2+ is one of the most widespread second messengers used in signal transduction pathways. Intracellular levels of Ca2+ are usually kept low, as Ca2+ often forms insoluble…Read article
Integrative Open-Source Software for Image Analysis in Biology
Imaging techniques are indispensable in many fields of life sciences today. With state-of-the-art optics and metrology, they provide hundreds of gigabytes of still images and videos. Correspondingly,…Read article
Nobel Prize 2012 in Chemistry for Studies of G-Protein-Coupled Receptors
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2012 to Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka for studies of G-protein–coupled receptors.Read article
Nobel Prize 2012 in Physiology or Medicine for Stem Cell Research
The Nobel Prize recognizes two scientists who discovered that mature, specialised cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body. Their findings…Read article
Taking the Long View
In exploring how embryos take shape, John Wallingford has identified a key pathway involved in vertebrate development – and human disease.Read article
Label-free FLIM
Many biological samples exhibit autofluorescence. Its often broad spectra can interfere with fluorescent labeling strategies. This application letter demonstrates how autofluorescence can serve as an…Read article
FRET with FLIM
FLIM combines lifetime measurements with imaging: lifetimes obtained for each image pixel are color-coded to produce additional image contrast. Thus, FLIM delivers information about the spatial…Read article
Digital Camera Technologies for Scientific Bio-Imaging
This four-part series of articles published in Microscopy and Analysis covers the factors to consider in choosing a camera among CCD, EMCCD, and scientific-grade CMOS camera technologies for…Read article
Postlipolytic Insulin-dependent Remodeling of Micro Lipid Droplets in Adipocytes
Despite the lipolysis–lipogenesis cycle being a fundamental process in adipocyte biology, very little is known about the morphological changes that occur during this process. The remodeling of lipid…Read article
Scientific Illustration and Animation for Research Scientists
One of the crucial tasks of a research scientist is reporting and communicating about his work. This is vital for cutting edge research; it is crucial to gain insights from other experts, to get a…Read article
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