Live cell imaging

Live cell imaging is the study of living cells using time-lapse microscopy. It is used by scientists to obtain a better understanding of biological function through the study of cellular dynamics. Live cell imaging was pioneered in first decade of the 20th century. One of the first time-lapse microcinematographic films of cells ever made was made by Julius Ries, showing the fertilization and development of the sea urchin egg. Since then, several microscopy methods have been developed which allow researchers to study living cells in greater detail with less effort. A newer type of imaging utilizing quantum dots have been used as they are shown to be more stable. The development of holotomographic microscopy has disregarded phototoxicity and other staining-derived disadvantages by implementing digital staining based on cells’ refractive index. Live cell imaging is the study of living cells using time-lapse microscopy. It is used by scientists to obtain a better understanding of biological function through the study of cellular dynamics. Live cell imaging was pioneered in first decade of the 20th century. One of the first time-lapse microcinematographic films of cells ever made was made by Julius Ries, showing the fertilization and development of the sea urchin egg. Since then, several microscopy methods have been developed which allow researchers to study living cells in greater detail with less effort. A newer type of imaging utilizing quantum dots have been used as they are shown to be more stable. The development of holotomographic microscopy has disregarded phototoxicity and other staining-derived disadvantages by implementing digital staining based on cells’ refractive index. Biological systems exist as a complex interplay of countless cellular components interacting across four dimensions to produce the phenomenon called life. While it is common to reduce living organisms to non-living samples to accommodate traditional static imaging tools, the further the sample deviates from the native conditions the more likely the delicate processes in question will exhibit perturbations. The onerous task of capturing the true physiological identity of living tissue, therefore, requires high-resolution visualization across both space and time within the parent organism. The technological advances of live-cell imaging, designed to provide spatiotemporal images of subcellular events in real-time, serves an important role for corroborating the biological relevance of physiological changes observed during experimentation. Due to their contiguous relationship with physiological conditions, live-cell assays are considered the standard for probing complex and dynamic cellular events. As dynamic processes such as migration, cell development, and intracellular trafficking increasingly become the focus of biological research, techniques capable of capturing 3-dimensional data in real-time for cellular networks (in situ) and entire organisms (in vivo) will become indispensable tools in understanding biological systems. The general acceptance of live-cell imaging has led to a rapid expansion in the number of practitioners and established a need for increased spatial and temporal resolution without compromising the health of the cell..mw-parser-output .tmulti .thumbinner{display:flex;flex-direction:column}.mw-parser-output .tmulti .trow{display:flex;flex-direction:row;clear:left;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;box-sizing:border-box}.mw-parser-output .tmulti .tsingle{margin:1px;float:left}.mw-parser-output .tmulti .theader{clear:both;font-weight:bold;text-align:center;align-self:center;background-color:transparent;width:100%}.mw-parser-output .tmulti .thumbcaption{text-align:left;background-color:transparent}.mw-parser-output .tmulti .text-align-left{text-align:left}.mw-parser-output .tmulti .text-align-right{text-align:right}.mw-parser-output .tmulti .text-align-center{text-align:center}@media all and (max-width:720px){.mw-parser-output .tmulti .thumbinner{width:100%!important;box-sizing:border-box;max-width:none!important;align-items:center}.mw-parser-output .tmulti .trow{justify-content:center}.mw-parser-output .tmulti .tsingle{float:none!important;max-width:100%!important;box-sizing:border-box;text-align:center}.mw-parser-output .tmulti .thumbcaption{text-align:center}} Before the introduction of the phase contrast microscope it was difficult to observe living cells. As living cells are translucent they must be stained to be visible in a traditional light microscope. Unfortunately, the process of staining cells generally kills the cells. With the invention of the phase contrast microscopy it became possible to observe unstained living cells in detail. After its introduction in the 1940s, live cell imaging rapidly became popular using phase contrast microscopy. The phase contrast microscope was popularized through a series of time-lapse movies (Video 1), recorded using a photographic film camera. Its inventor, Frits Zernike, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1953. Other later phase contrast techniques used to observe unstained cells are Hoffman modulation and differential interference contrast microscopy. Phase contrast microscopy does not have the capacity to observe specific proteins or other organic chemical compounds which form the complex machinery of a cell. Synthetic and organic fluorescent stains have therefore been developed to label such compounds, making them observable by fluorescent microscopy (Video 2). Fluorescent stains are, however, phototoxic, invasive and bleach when observed. This limits their use when observing living cells over extended periods of time. Non-invasive phase contrast techniques are therefore often used as a vital complement to fluorescent microscopy in live cell imaging applications. As a result of the rapid increase in pixel density of digital image sensors, quantitative phase contrast microscopy has emerged as an alternative microscopy method for live cell imaging. Quantitative phase contrast microscopy has an advantage over fluorescent and phase contrast microscopy in that it is both non-invasive and quantitative in its nature. Contrary to phase contrast images, quantitative phase contrast images (Video 3) can be automatically processed to extract vast amount of dynamic cellular data from time-lapse image sequences. Due to the narrow focal depth of conventional microscopy, live cell imaging is to a large extent currently limited to observing cells on a single plane. Most implementations of quantitative phase contrast microscopy allow for images to be created and focused at different focal planes from a single exposure. This opens up the future possibility of 3-dimensional live cell imaging by means of fluorescence techniques. Quantitative phase contrast microscopy with rotational scanning allow 3D time-lapse images of living cells to be acquired at high resolution. Live-cell imaging represents a careful compromise between acquiring the highest-resolution image and keeping the cells alive for as long as possible. As a result, live-cell microscopists face a unique set of challenges that are often overlooked when working with fixed-specimens. Moreover, live-cell imaging often employs special optical system and detector specifications. For example, ideally the microscopes used in live-cell imaging would have high signal-to-noise ratios, fast image acquisition rates to capture time-lapse video of extracellular events, and maintaining the long-term viability of the cells. However, optimizing even a single facet of image acquisition can be resource intensive and should be considered on a case by case basis. In cases where extra space between the objective and the specimen is required to work with the sample, a dry lens can be used, potentially requiring additional adjustments of the correction collar, which changes the location of the lens in the objective, to account for differences in imaging chambers. Special objective lenses are designed with correction collars that correct for spherical aberrations while accounting for the cover slip thickness. In high numerical aperture (NA) dry objective lenses, the correction collar adjustment ring will change the position of a movable lens group to account for differences in the way the outside of the lens focuses light relative to the center. Although lens aberrations are inherent in all lens designs, they become more problematic in dry lenses where resolution retention is key. Oil immersion is a technique that can increase image resolution by immersing the lens and the specimen in oil with a high refractive index. Since light bends when it passes between mediums with different refractive indexes, by placing oil with the same refractive index as glass between the lens and the slide, two transitions between refractive indices can be avoided. However, for most applications it is recommended that oil immersion be used with fixed (dead) specimens because live cells require an aqueous environment and the mixing of oil and water can cause severe spherical aberrations. For some applications silicone oil can be used to produce more accurate image reconstructions. Silicone oil is an attractive media because it has a refractive index that is close to that of living cells, allowing it to produce high resolution images while minimizing spherical aberrations.