Tag: Cool service

The LCI microscopy course 2021 starts next week! :)

As usual the lectures at the LCI microscopy course will broadcasted live online, free of charge and there is no need to register.

Title: Microscopy: improve your imaging skills – from sample preparation to image analysis

The aim for this course is to improve the microscopy skills of students and researchers who have already used a microscope to acquire digital images of fluorescent samples but feel that more knowledge could help them.

Applications are closed but all lectures will be broadcasted live and open to anyone without registration.

The course covers the following topics:

  • Optics, image formation, fluorescence, fluorophores, microscope and microscopy types
  • Objectives and refraction index, Cameras and detectors
  • Noise and background, Cameras and detectors, Bit depth and saturation, Multicolour imaging
  • Resolution and contrast, Sample preparation, Immunostaining
  • Nyquist sampling, Confocal and wide field settings, Scaling up and speeding up, High throughput/content
  • Volume imaging, deconvolution, multiphoton, Clearing and expansion
  • Live cell imaging, Fourier, AI, Super Resolution microscopy
  • Data handling, OMERO.figure, Requirements for image analysis, Colocalization
  • Image processing and analysis

Check the course schedule and details of how to join the Zoom webinars. Scroll down to read the kind testimonies of our dear students! 😊

Here is the course syllabus.

Hope you enjoy the LCI facility microscopy course 2021!

Gisele got the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative grant!!

Congratulations to our dear in-house image analyst Gisele Miranda who got the prestigious Chan Zuckerberg Initiative grant in December! 🙂

Gisele got this grant thanks to the fruitful collaboration between the BioImage Informatics facility at Scilife and the Live Cell Imaging facility at KI. We are delighted for her and for all the LCI users as this will allow us to keep working with Gisele for many years.

Congratulations Gisele! Very well-deserved! 🙂

Look at what CZI has chosen as their symbol of Science: a microscope!

From Images to Knowledge virtual workshop

Nov 30th-Dec 2nd, Janelia Research Center organizes a great image analysis workshop with loads of goodies. Everything is online and free. There are in depth and more general workshops about Deep Learning with different freeware, programming and scripting of all sorts, Big data things… Check the program here.

Tweety turned into a power machine!

Our dear Tweety microscope, which was simplest and cutest of all the LCI systems, has muted into our most sophisticated power machine!

On the 24th at 10, we will run an online demo (link below) to show what our upgraded Tweety can deliver:

  • Much larger field of view (from 18 mm diagonal to 25 mm)
  • Upgraded single point confocal on the left side
  • Resonant scanner with 1024×1024 pixels (compared to 512×512 on our other resonant scanners), still the same speed (30 fps) and improved low noise
  • Spinning disk confocal on the right side with bypass to image wide field
  • 2 very sensitive cameras on the right side: one with the very large field of view and 11um pixels for best sensitivity and one with the normal field of view and 6.45 pixels for best resolution
  • Our great Primo is still on the back of the microscope to allow micropatterning of proteins at the bottom of a dish or micromanufacturing of wells in the shape/pattern of your choice
  • 2 wonderful silicon immersion objectives specialized for tissue imaging with automatic correction ring: 20x/1.05 and 40x/1.25

After the demo, the LCI users who have already been trained on our widefield systems can get access to Tweety for free after a mandatory short training.

Please add the demo in your calendar and make sure to test the link ahead of the meeting.

Link to the Zoom Meeting on the 24th at 10am: https://ki-se.zoom.us/j/7302561100

Where to find microscopy jobs, forums and wikis

Where to ask microscopy-related questions?

– Image.sc and microlist
Post your microscopy, sample preparation and image analysis questions

– Confocal server
Old email-based forum that is followed by tons of people across the globe as well as most microscopy companies. Post your microscopy and sample preparation questions.

Freeware for image analysis

– Image J/Fiji
Great freeware to open images acquired on any microscope, resize, crop, change contrast, create movies, annotate, analyze and much more.

– Cell Profiler
Freeware for automated image analysis including machine learning.

– KNIME
Open source to build a custom made image analysis pipeline

– Icy
Great freeware to open images acquired on any microscope, resize, crop, change contrast, create movies, annotate, analyze and much more.

Networks, jobs and career

Light microscopy jobs, meetings, courses, networking… in Europe. Remember to mail them that you want to show up on their map of European microscopy!

Loads of information from which companies/institute works with research to how to find an apartment when moving to another lab, find work, know your rights, express your opinion about researchers’ work conditions…

Other places to look for work:

Microscopy wikis

– Kurt Thorn’s excellent microscopy blog
I highly recommend this blog even if it is not updated anymore. Monthly digest of major microscopy related articles. Loads of tips.

– Microscopy Education by Nikon

– Leica Science Lab

– Microscopy Education by Olympus

– Microscopy Education by ZEISS

– Molecular Expressions

– SVI deconvolution

– Microscopy info

– Nature Milestones Light Microscopy

– iBiology Microscopy Course

Neubias webinars on Youtube

Updates on the next events of the NEUBIAS Academy@Home Webinar series,

Newly confirmed events:

5 May: ilastik beyond pixel classification, by Anna Kreshuk and Dominik Kutra-

6 May: GPU-Accelerated Image Processing with CLIJ2, by Robert Haase

7 May: Interactive Bioimage Analysis with Python and Jupyter, by Guillaume Witz

Upcoming events open to registration:

LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER:

28 April: Introduction to nuclei segmentation with StarDist, by Martin Weigert et al

29 April: Quantitative Pathology and Bioimage Analysis: QuPath v0.2.0, By Pete Bankhead

30 April: Advanced Image Processing with MorphoLibJ, by David Legland

Two weeks after the opening of the Academy and of the registrations, Webinars and online courses have already attracted over 5,000 registrations!

The events are recorded and some are already available on the Youtube NEUBIAS Channel.

Furthermore, a thread will be opened in the image.sc Forum to report Q&As and to welcome further questions/comments for each event.

You’ll find more information here.

Don’t just sit on your bum!

In these strange Coronavirus time, one tends to sit at home in front of one’s computer. Following the Corona pandemics, it is not hard to predict a back ache pandemic!

I have been using Workrave for years and it has cured by shoulder ache! 🙂 Workrave is a freeware that can be downloaded from here.

Basically it locks your keyboard and mouse at the interval of time you decide and for how long as you decide. You can even set a maximum work time per day, a longer interruption for lunch or follow some simple stretching programs during the interruption.

I have simply set mine to lock my computer for 2 min every 30 min. Works a charm. 🙂

Neubias online school of image analysis

Neubias is back with new ideas! Neubias is the Network of European Bioimage Analysts and what they burn for is to help scientists analyze their images.

Possibly inspired by the Corona time, they will start an online school for image analysis based on video tutorials and online events.

Have a look at their new page called Neubias academy where they announce several events coming up in the next few months.

The antibody validation nightmare

Ever wondered if that antibody you used throughout your whole PhD was actually also binding to something else than its supposed target protein?

Antibody validation in tissue staining is a very difficult task!

Here is a great step-by-step validation protocol published by EuroMabNet, a network of scientists who try to improve antibody validation.

And this paper gives a useful flow chart for antibody validation.

And here is the 5 pillars of antibody validation paper which explains what can be done to validate antibodies.

 

Know your RRid!

Imagine starting a study about some cool protein.

You find some useful articles on Google Scholar. In one paper, an antibody is mentioned. The name of the company that sold it to the authors is mentioned in the Material and Method but unfortunately that company has closed down or has been swallowed by one of the Pharma giants so you cannot order. Then you realize that the company was not producing any antibodies anyway, they were buying it from another company so there is no way to trace and buy the same antibody. Nightmare…

Then imagine that instead, the paper mentions the RRid number for that antibody. You do not know about what that is but you check and find this paper that explains it all.

Now suddenly, not only you can find on the Scicrunch website which company produces this antibody and which resells it so you can buy it, but you can also search pubmed for the RRid and find all the articles that mention it, opening your eyes to lots of results about your protein that have been published specifically with using that antibody. Now you can also check if the antibody gives consistent results!

And imagine being to do this for your favorite mouse model as well. See all publications that have mentioned your mouse RRId!

But it relies on you writing the RRid of your antibody or mouse in your next publication so think about it! 😀

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