Monitoring HEK293 cell culture inside an incubator

ioLight has developed a small, affordable and high-quality digital microscope for monitoring cell culture. The product is fully sealed so it can be left inside the chamber and easily sterilised afterwards. It sends images wirelessly to a tablet or computer outside the incubator so that the cell culture can be viewed without opening the incubator and risking damaging the culture.

Having a microscope in the incubator allows for continuous monitoring of cultures, giving insights into cell culture health and early detection of contaminants. This improves yields and allows experiments to be carried out directly in the incubator, providing a stable and contaminant-free environment for long-running assays or delicate 3D cultures.

The compact size of the ioLight inverted microscope also frees up space. Whether that is for other flasks containing the rest of the current batch or the next experiment. The instrument is robust and sealed, so it can operate in the high humidity and CO₂ conditions in an incubator and be fully sterilised to prevent contamination after each run.

Furthermore, the ioLight cell culture microscope transmits images wirelessly, so the microscope can simply be placed into an incubator to provide continuous monitoring with timelapse and video capture features. Your cell cultures can be presented in standard Petri dishes, 96 well plates or T-flasks. The microscope has settings for brightfield, Low NA (high contrast), digital phase contrast and darkfield to provide good images even in low-contrast subjects.

The image and YouTube video were taken inside an incubator. They clearly show the number, motility, confluence and morphology of the cells, providing researchers and technicians with confidence in the health of their experimental cell lines. Our thanks to Dr Mark Willet at The University of Southampton for helping us produce these images.

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