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The Advanced Imaging Core Facility (AICF) provides access to a wide collection of frontline light microscopes allowing the users to spam from basic observations with transmitted light to the more advanced fluorescence live imaging techniques. The Facility staff offer specialized technical and scientific support throughout every step of imaging experiments, ranging from the experimental design and image acquisitions to image processing and data analysis.  The CIBIO AICF is part of the LabSSAH lab, a partnership among Department CIBIO, the Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK) and the CNR-Institute of Biophysics Unit at Trento (IBF-TN).

Applications and services

The applications and services offered by the Facility are:

  • Transmitted light microscopy (Bright-Field, Phase Contrast, Differential Interference Contrast and Dark-Field).
  • Fluorescence wide-field microscopy
  • Confocal microscopy (both laser scanning confocal and spinning disc systems). 
  • Super-resolution microscopy: PALM, dSTORM, SIM 
  • Time-lapse and in vivo fluorescence imaging (wide-field and confocal) within incubation systems that permit to control the environmental conditions over long period of time.
  • Wide-field optical sectioning with structured illumination (Zeiss Apotome 2 module and Till Photonics SIM module).
  • Video Confocal Super Resolution (VCS).
  • Fast and low phototoxic imaging of live processes (both in wide-field and confocal mode) with LEDs and sCMOS cameras. 
  • FRAP, FRET and smFRET. 
  • HILO and TIRF techniques. 
  • Single-particle tracking.
  • Large area imaging (mosaics, tiles or panorama modules) on big samples (such as mouse brain sections or histological preparations).
  • Multi-modal preclinical in vivo imaging: fluorescence, bioluminescence, X-ray and radio isotopic modalities (on whole small animals as zebrafish and mice).
  • Laser capture micro-dissection of tissues at single-cell level (both on fixed samples and living cells in cultures). 
  • Histological sample preparations for light microscopy (cutting instruments for tissue sectioning and dedicated fluorescence stereo-microscopes).
  • Image processing and data analysis. ImageJ/Fiji, SVI Huygens Core and Essential (for deconvolution analysis and distilling PSF), Leica LasAF/LasX, Zeiss ZEN and Nikon NIS Elements.

The Facility staff will be happy to offer:

  • Trainings for members and guests of the Institute for the autonomous use of the microscopes.
  • Shadowing of non-autonomous users.
  • Services for internal and external Cibio users. 
  • Data analysis.
  • Technical support in experimental design, microscope purchase and configuration.

Facility Equipment and Software for data analysis​

Inverted wide-field fluorescence microscopes:

  • Zeiss Axio Observer Z1, equipped with Colibri 1, ApoTome 2 and incubation system.
  • Till Photonics iMIC, equipped with structured illumination, FRAP, FRET and TIRF packages and incubation system.
  • Leica DMi8, equipped with white LED and sCMOS camera.
  • Leica DMi4000 B.

Up-right wide-field fluorescence microscopes:

  • Zeiss Axio Imager M2 equipped with both a colour and a monochromatic camera.
  • Nikon Eclipse 90i.

Confocal systems:

  • Leica TCS SP8 laser scanning confocal system with LIGHTENING and Navigator modules, installed on a Leica DMi8 fully-motorized inverted fluorescence microscope equipped with a Lumencor SOLA-SMII white LED and an Andor iXon Ultra 888 EMCCD camera for epi-fluorescence acquisitions.
  • CREST Optics X-Light V2 Spinning Disk + Video Confocal Super-resolution module, installed on a Nikon Eclipse Ti2 inverted fluorescence microscope with incubation system.

Super-resolution microscope:

  • ONI Nanoimager with temperature control.

In vivo imaging:

  • Bruker Xtreme I.

Laser Micro-dissector:

  • Leica LMD6500, on a Leica DM6000 B up-right fluorescence microscope.

Fluorescence stereo-microscopes:

  • Leica MZ 10F and MZ 16F.

Cutting machines:

  • Leica CM1850 UV Cryostat.
  • Thermo Scientific HM525 NX Cryostat.
  • Leica VT1200 Vibratome.
  • Leica RM2245 Microtome.
  • Leica HistoCore Biocut Microtome.
  • Histo-Line HistoPro 200 Tissue Processor.
  • Histo-Line TEC 2900 Tissue Embedding Center. 

The post-processing software available in the Facility are:

  • The open-source software ImageJ and Fiji directly accessible by any user with its computer or by AICF working station.
  • SVI Huygens Core software (via the web interface Huygens Remote Manager) for deconvolution and colocalization analyses and 3D-rendering, and Huygens Essential for distilling PSF.
  • Leica LasAF/LasX, Zeiss ZEN and Nikon NIS Elements