Systems include everything needed for calcium and other single excitation and radiometric fluorophore experiments, including a microscope, for under £20,000
Image Solutions says it is about to cause a stir in the market by launching a range of ratiometric calcium imaging systems from under £20,000.
These systems are said to be unique because they include absolutely everything needed for calcium and other single excitation plus radiometric fluorophore experiments.
The range of three imaging systems include the InCyt Basic IM, InCyt Standard IM and the InCyt High Speed IM.
All of the systems include an inverted epi-fluorescence/phase contrast microscope, low-light level integrating CCD camera, computer controlled fast changing monochromator Xenon arc lamp, image processing computer and data acquisition/analysis software.
The difference between the three systems is the speed of capture of ratiometric points, the cost and the quality of the components as outlined below.
The InCyt Basic IM system is said to be an excellent value for money system that can acquire ratiometric data in 1.5 points per second for £20,000.
The InCyt Standard IM system uses slightly better components than the Basic system acquiring ratiometric data in four points per second.
The InCyt High Speed IM system uses superior components enabling the acquisition of ratiometric data at 20 points per second, providing the user with more flexibility for future research.
The imaging systems have been designed by scientists for scientists.
As a result, they are not only technically sophisticated but very easy to use, says Image Solutions.
Menu selection appears in the sequence in which experiments are performed.
The software allows standard Windows graphical user interface protocol and new users can be doing their first experiment in a few hours.
Data can be measured continuously on as many as 50 pre-selected regions of interest. The results can be displayed in real time or images can be saved for analysis at a later time.
Saved images can be played back as an animated sequence which is ideal for analysis of sub-cellular responses, intercellular communication and heterogeneity among the individual cells in a population.
Ion concentration within cells can be converted to colour using standard or custom pseudo-colour tables.
Image sequences can be presented as a montage with user-defined annotation for presentation and publication.
Data generated can be stored in a standard Tiff format and data files are stored as Ascii text.
