Innovations in confocal microscopy  – and a trip down memory lane!  

16th January 2025 - Last modified 4th February 2025

By Ashley Hayes, Account Executive. 

One of the best parts of our jobs is learning about the new technologies that are innovating the life sciences and healthcare fields. That’s why we love visiting our clients in person and seeing their products in action, as it really gives us a feel for what makes them special.  

Towards the end of last year, Account Executive Ashley Hayes got the chance to see one of our clients, HORIBA, demonstrate its latest confocal microscopy platform InverTau™. It just so happens that this event was held at Leeds University – the place Ashley did her PhD, which coincidentally involved many hours of confocal microscopy!  

Below, read Ashley’s account of the event, from revisiting well-loved confocal microscopy techniques, to learning how innovation is taking the field to new heights, with HORIBA’s new microscopy platform. 

A well-loved imaging technique

 Essentially, confocal microscopy uses lasers to illuminate a fluorescently-labelled sample. One of the best things about this technique is the ability to image cells at high resolution, even at a subcellular level. An endless range of fluorescent probes and dyes are used in confocal microscopy, illuminating cellular structures like cell membranes, and organelles like the nucleus, cytoskeleton, and mitochondria .

In confocal microscopy, fluorescent dyes and organelle markers are used to study various biological processes, including disease, and can help unravel the function of uncharacterised genes and proteins.

My PhD simply wouldn’t have been possible without a confocal microscope. My project used fluorescent organelle markers to investigate how plant cells change during pathogen infection. Over my four years at Leeds University, many hours were spent preparing samples, fine-tuning the microscope’s settings, and taking images. Although the microscopy sessions could be long, nothing compared to the feeling when the sample, laser power, and pinhole diameter aligned to capture the perfect image.

Going beyond the basics with FLIM

Speaking from my own research experience, confocal microscopy is an effective and aesthetically pleasing way to visualise cellular structures. Moving beyond simple images and videos, confocal microscopy can also be used for more quantitative characterisation, with techniques like fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM).

FLIM measures the fluorescence lifetime of the fluorophores, which is the average time that the fluorophore remains in an excited state before returning to its ground state. FLIM involves scanning the sample under the microscope with a laser beam to determine how quickly the fluorescence intensity decreases. This technique generates a colour-coded image of the sample, with the colour of each pixel representing each molecule’s fluorescence lifetime.  

FLIM can be used for a range of applications, like investigating ligand interactions, detecting conformational changes in proteins, and characterising changes in the microcellular environment – including the pH, viscosity, ion and oxygen concentrations. Interestingly, FLIM is being increasingly used in healthcare settings for diagnostic purposes, with the ability to detect cancers and a range of other diseases [1].

At the forefront of FLIM

Despite the widespread applications of FLIM, systems with suboptimal resolution, low frame rates, and high costs prevent the technique from reaching its full potential. HORIBA is helping to overcome these barriers with its FLIM platform InverTau™, designed for speed, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness, while also generating images in 4k resolution.

We were invited to see the InverTau platform in action during a demonstration held at the University of Leeds. We always jump at the chance to see client innovations in real life, and this was no exception! Plus, it was great to be back on familiar turf, with the event being held in the same confocal microscopy suite I’d gotten to know so well during my PhD.

As we saw during the demonstration, a key advantage of the InverTau is that it can be connected to any inverted confocal microscope. In this instance, it was connected to a Nikon microscope, and the InverTau platform was also used with HORIBA’s FLIMera™ widefield camera. This small device allows regions of interest to be quickly sampled before using the InverTau. 

HORIBA’s microscopy experts talked us through how the platform works, including how to use the designated EzTime Image software. The InverTau’s power was demonstrated using samples taken from HORIBA’s microscopy team. Following this, we had the opportunity to test the platform out using our own samples, to see for ourselves how the platform works. As a scientific marketing agency, we didn’t have any samples to hand, but it was great to see researchers using their own samples, showcasing the platform’s versatility and applications in real-world settings.

Advances in confocal microscopy, with the likes of HORIBA’s InverTau platform, are set to transform research and testing labs around the globe with their versatile range of applications. You can learn more about how InverTau is advancing the capabilities of FLIM here.

Looking to stay up to date with more scientific innovations and news updates? You can follow us on our LinkedIn. And if you want to learn more about how we can support your own scientific communications, get in touch with us.

References

[1] Z. Wang et al., ‘Applications of fluorescence lifetime imaging in clinical medicine’, J Innov Opt Health Sci, vol. 11, no. 1, 2018 .doi:10.1142/S179354581830001X.