Advanced live imaging for the Eastern ARC with dual inverted light-sheets and AI-led analysis

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Microscopy has turned into an incredibly exciting area of research over the last two decades, with two recent Nobel Prizes and many new technological developments. Scientists can now observe cells moving around, digesting, interacting, multiplying and assembling at high resolution and over long periods. But cells are easily damaged if intense light is focussed on them. So when observing cells with a microscope, it is important to minimise such photodamage by lowering the light intensity. However, lower levels of light result in poorer images in the microscope and less useful information, so there is a clear dilemma between high light (good image, but cells damaged) and low light (cells healthy but image worse). Lightsheet microscopy, a relatively new technique, can solve this issue by providing good images at low light intensity: Delicate cells, tissues and whole organisms are scanned with a 'sheet' or plane of light and can be observed over days, producing breathtaking movies. Together with collaborators across the Eastern Arc, which comprise the universities of Essex, Kent and East Anglia, we want to use a high-end light-sheet microscope in combination with cutting-edge software to address new and exciting biological questions. This will allow many research groups in the South East and East of England to use light-sheet microscopy for their investigations. By establishing a nation-wide light-sheet user group to share new ways to use light-sheet microscopes. By making this technology more accessible to users, imaging with light sheets is poised to give us new insights into biological systems in ways we may not have thought possible.