Nikon BioStation IM Live Cell Recorder

Nikon Updated: 2007-06-19
Nikon BioStation IM Live Cell Recorder

The perfect solution for long term time-lapse, live cell imaging.

The BioStation IM is a compact cell incubation and monitoring system that allows users with minimal microscopy experience to conduct live cell imaging without a steep learning curve. The BioStation IM facilitates a broad array of longterm timelapse experiments, including studies of cell growth, morphology, and protein expression, by providing consistent environmental control of temperature, humidity and gas concentration in combination with phase and fluorescence imaging of exceptional quality.

Total System Integration
The BioStation IM incorporates a motorized inverted microscope, an incubation chamber, and a cooled CCD camera into a single package. Being an all-in-one, complete solution from one vendor, IM overcomes stability and compatibility issues experienced in multi-vendor systems. Additionally, BioStation has a small footprint and is very easy to set up, requiring no alignment.

Thermal and Mechanical Stability
BioStation IM features a no focus drift design and a vibration damping chassis. Combined with the thermal stability provided by the totally integrated incubation system, the mechanical stability offered by BioStation IM allows researchers to image for hours or even days without focus drift.

Integrated Cell Incubation System
Cells are easily maintained at the appropriate temperature, humidity and CO2 level with BioStation IM. 5% CO2, either from a premixed tank or the optional CO2 mixer is humidified by bubbling through a bottle of water located at the front of the instrument. Sensors located throughout the instruments keep the temperature of the sample at 37° C.

2 Versions of BioStation for optimal image quality
BioStation IM can be ordered in two versions. Cell S1 is for use with a single glass bottom 35mm dish; Cell S1-P is for use with a plastic dish. Cell S1 has a 40X 0.8 NA Plan Fluor objective, yielding magnifications of 20X, 40X, 80X, while magnifications of 10X, 20X and 40X are obtained with S1-P via a 20X 0.5 NA Plan Fluor objective. This objective has a correction collar to correct for spherical aberrations caused by different dish thicknesses.

Phase and Fluorescence Imaging Capabilities with Integrated Camera
Phase contrast images of unsurpassed quality are obtained with BioStation IM, which uses a red LED as the transmitted light source. BioStation’s phase elements never need alignment, and the red transmitted light was selected to be cell friendly. With 2 channel fluorescence imaging, using standard Nikon filter cubes and Nikon’s new Intensilight, BioStation IM is the solution for many researchers’ advanced applications. BioStation IM includes a 2M monochrome cooled camera, made by Nikon.

Powerful, Intuitive Software and Internal Motorized X, Y and Z for Multidimensional Imaging Experiments
Dedicated control software ensures easy operation, allowing the user to select between GUI’s for live observation, time-lapse settings, and acquired image viewer. Multichannel, multipoint timelapse imaging can be set up easily by following the instructions on the GUI. The objective has 6mm of travel in X and Y, allowing large areas of the field to be sample. Additionally, moving the objective instead of the stage lends stability and repeatability to the system.