Celldiscoverer 7 – Your Automated Microscope for Live Cell Imaging

Adding Efficiency to Your Fluorescence Imaging

With Celldiscoverer 7, you combine the ease-of-use of an automated boxed microscope with the image quality and flexibility of a classic inverted research microscope. Celldiscoverer 7 calibrates itself, detects and focuses on your samples while the optics adjust themselves. Whether working with 2D or 3D cell cultures, tissue sections or small model organisms, you will acquire better data in shorter times with this reliable automated live cell imaging platform. What’s more, you can now add the new LSM 900 with Airyscan 2 to gently image dynamic processes in your living samples with highest framerates in superresolution.

Highlights

Your Flexible Automated Microscope

Celldiscoverer 7 is a fully integrated high-end automated live cell imaging system. Tailor the system to your applications with various incubation and detection options.
Go for fast, sensitive sCMOS or EMCCD cameras when performing demanding live cell experiments and rapid time lapse recordings. For screening applications with high throughput, choose a high dynamic range camera with a large field of view.
Add LSM 900 with Airyscan 2 to get better data from three-dimensional samples.

Celldiscoverer 7 detail

Get Quality Data from Your Samples

A hardware-based focus finds and keeps the focus automatically after detecting the thickness and optical properties of the sample carrier for demanding long-term, time-lapse imaging.
Autocorr objectives correct spherical aberrations to deliver crisp contrast and high resolution.
The automated microscope Celldiscoverer 7 provides a range of integrated incubation options to create the right environment for your living cells.

Celldiscoverer 7 – autoimmersion zoom-in

Easily Get Reproducible Results

Automatic calibration routines ensure reproducible results in live cell imaging.
With barcode recognition you can identify your sample, sample carrier and even the type of experiment.
If you don‘t work with barcodes, an automatic preview scan will identify the sample carrier and calibrate it.

Lateral line primordium migration and deposition of immature neuromasts in a Zebrafish embryo (Danio rerio). © Courtesy of J. Hartmann and D. Gilmour, EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany

LSM 900 with Airyscan 2

LSM 900 Beampath

Life happens in 3D – and your research often calls for optical sectioning to image your living samples with best possible contrast and resolution. Now you can add LSM 900 with Airyscan 2 to your Celldiscoverer 7. You get the best of both worlds: ease of use and automation from a fully integrated microscope platform and the superb confocal image quality and flexibility of the LSM 9 family with Airyscan 2. You perform superresolution live cell imaging with up to 1.5× resolution improvement. And you easily separate multiple labels with spectral imaging. You can now analyze dynamic processes in living samples with photomanipulation for FRAP, FRET or related techniques. It’s never been easier to precisely connect widefield and confocal images. Fast mixed-mode acquisition simplifies and speeds up your workflow and gives you unique insights into your sample.

Autocorr Objectives

With the automated microscope Celldiscoverer 7 you are free to use Petri dishes, chamber slides, multiwell plates, plastic or glass, thin or thick vessel bottoms, low skirt or high skirt plates. Automatic sample recognition detects all relevant vessel features while loading your sample. Autocorr objectives adjusts the correction ring of the objective to compensate for spherical aberrations. Find Focus automatically places your sample in focus and Definite Focus keeps it there. Get crisp images with low phototoxicity from deep inside your sample.

The images show tubulin in FluoCell prepared slide #1. © Courtesy of Invitrogen, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. Left image shows spherical aberration due to unadjusted optics.

Right image shows the same structure using an Autocorr objective. The correction results in increased contrast, resolution and intensity, providing low phototoxicity.

Autoimmersion

In life sciences, cell biology or screening applications, your samples mostly consist of water and / or will be mounted in aqueous solutions. Celldiscoverer 7 combines an outstanding 50x water immersion objective with rapid automated immersion supply and removal. An elastic silicon membrane simultaneously seals the sample chamber to avoid unnecessary airflow while protecting the system from potential liquid spillage. Additionally, Celldiscoverer 7 is automatically monitoring the immersion and adding water, as needed. With this automated microscope you can perform unbiased live cell experiments at 37 °C over several days or carry out extensive scanning processes on multiwell plates.

Find Focus – Keep Focus

Use the hardware-based Find Focus function to automatically focus your sample and find your region of interest. Select Definite Focus to maintain the focal position throughout your live cell experiments. Or combine both methods: The automated microscope Celldiscoverer 7 can automatically create focus maps for multiple positions in long-term time-lapse experiments.

Capitalize on LED-Technology for Live Cell Imaging

Celldiscoverer 7 illumination, schematic drawing

Use the advantages of LED-technology for efficient illumination with low phototoxicity, fast switching times and long-term stability. That’s what delivers gentle live cell imaging, increased throughput and reproducible results. The fluorescence excitation unit combines up to seven LEDs for maximum flexibility in the choice of dyes – from deep blue to far-red.

Applications

Reproducible Results Made Easy

As soon as you start imaging, automatic calibration routines take over to ensure reproducible results. Check the current status and follow progress of your experiments on the touchscreen.

With barcode recognition you can identify your sample, sample carrier and even the type of experiment. If you don‘t work with barcodes, an automatic preview scan will identify the sample carrier and calibrate it. ZEISS predictive service offers lasting and optimal instrument performance for increased system uptime and reliable results.

Fixed starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) stained with Hoechst (nuclei) and Phalloidin (actin). Side view imaged with a combination of camera based phase gradient contrast mode (left) and high sensitivity mode with Airyscan 2 (middle). Maximum intensity projection of 19 z-planes.

Fine image details and high signal to noise ratio can clearly be seen on the insert in the top right image, showing an enlarged view of a tentacle area. © Courtesy of A. Stokkermans, Ikmi Group, EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany

Video: Top view of a young animal, showing mouth and four tentacle buds. Maximum intensity projection of 69 z planes imaged with Airyscan 2 Multiplex. Images were acquired using the water immersion objective with a total magnication of 25× and a numerical aperture of 1.2.

Lateral line primordium migration and deposition of immature neuromasts in a Zebrafish embryo (Danio rerio). Animals were anesthetized and embedded using low concentrated agarose in a glass bottom petridish.
Initial camera based imaging allowed for a quick and easy sample navigation (top) combining Phase Gradient Contrast with fluorescence acquisition.
Subsequent high resolution imaging with Airyscan 2 in Multiplex mode was done on individual positions identified in the widefield image (white boxes).

Maximum intensity projections of an immature neuromast (127 z planes).

Maximum intensity projections of the lateral line primordium tip migrating through the animal (155 z-planes).

Green: LYN-eGFP (mebranes); Red: tagRFP-T-UTRCH (actin).
The gentle and fast image acquisition that is inherent to the Airyscan 2 Multiplex mode is very beneficial for this kind of application. The animal is unperturbed by the imaging while images with a very high signal to noise ratio as well as level of detail can be acquired at the same time.

Human lung epithelial cell line A549 stained with MitoTracker™ Orange (mitochondria) and SIR-DNA (nuclei).

The acquisition seemlessly combines two imaging modes – the fluorescent channels where captured in confocal mode using highly sensitive GaAsP detectors while the Phase Gradient Contrast is camera based.

A timelapse of 2.5 h was acquired using a 40× magnification with a numerical aperture of 0.95.

Organoid from a human breast cancer cell line. The cells express GFP-labeled H2B (nucelei) and mCherry (cytoplasmic staining depicted here in grey for better visualization).

Several organoids where grown in a multiwell plate with Matrigel. Initial sample navigation was performed using the transmitted light at a low magnification of 2.5× to identify interesting organoids.

Subsequently, high resolution images were acquired using the water immersion objective with a total magnification of 50×. 61 z-planes were acquired using ZEISS Celldiscoverer 7 with LSM 900 and Airyscan 2 in Multiplex mode.

One can clearly appreciate the robustness of the imaging given that Matrigel is not an ideal optical medium and the organoid was imaged at a distance of several micrometers from the coverglass.

Trachea system in a living fruitfly embryo (Drosophila melanogaster) imaged using ZEISS Celldiscoverer 7 with LSM 900 and Airyscan 2 in Multiplex mode. A water immersion objective with a magnification of 25× and numerical aperture of 1.2. in combination with multi-tile acquisition (8 tiles, 143 z-planes) was used.

CD4-mIFP under a tracheal promoter color coded for depth.

Caenorhabditis elegans germline. Decapitated nematodes where localized in widefield mode using a low magnification of 2.5× (transmitted light and fluorescence, DAPI; left). This allowed for an easy and convenient workflow to identify areas of interest for subsequent fast high resolution imaging in Multiplex mode for ZEISS Celldiscoverer 7 with LSM 900 and Airyscan 2 (right). A 25× magnifaction with water immersion and NA 1.2 was used to generate a z-stack of 62 planes.

Blue: DAPI (DNA);
Green: Alexa 488 (cross-over sites);
Orange: Alexa 546 (synaptonemal complex);
Red: Alexa 647 (chromosome axis).

Individual chromosomes in different meiotic cells are clearly distinguishable.

Kidney Tubule Organoids Grown from mIMCD3 Cells

Tubule organoids are useful to study morphogenetic processes in health and disease. Celldiscoverer 7 enables confocal image acquisition of large scanning fields at high resolution. Imaging of tubular structures in multiwell plates is accomplished at unprecedented speed, allowing for high-throughput applications such as drug screening.