The Facility is Ideally located in the Centre for Human Genetics, and has independent users and ongoing collaborations with BHF CRE/CRM associated groups, both within the centre and at various sites around Oxford. We are accessible to the entire Oxford Cardiovascular Science network, and all Oxford staff and labs are considered “internal users”. Our mission is to provide teaching, training and support to scientists at all stages of their career in every aspect of microscopy, including sample preparation, image acquisition and image analysis. On request, we can also work collaboratively, whereby our staff can work with groups to perform assays for them. This is particularly popular for live cell assays, for which we have standardised protocols which have been tested across multiple common cell types, and a bank of live cell probes and high-quality imaging plates which can be given to groups to run trial assays to test viability before committing to a full experiment with precious samples.

The core facility staff have over 20 years of combined experience in imaging everything from colorimetric tissue samples such as slide scanning H+E stained sections, fluorescent IF staining of both tissues and cells, such as en face imaging of vasculature, to live cell imaging assays, such as cardiac organoids and wound healing of endothelial cells.

We have a range of imaging systems to cover most common and advanced microscopy requirements:

Zeiss LSM900 Airyscan 2

Olympus SpinSR SoRa with high content imaging

Leica SP8 with FALCON FLIM imaging

Leica SP8 with white light laser

Leica DMI8 Widefield (Ca+ imager)

EVOS M5000

Zeiss Elyra 7 SIM/STORM/TIRF with RAPP optogenetics for FRAP

Zeiss Elyra PS1 STORM/TIRF

Zeiss Microbeam Laser Capture Microscope

Olympus VS200 Slidescanner

Leica Aperio slidescanner

We also have an analysis suite containing 3 top spec “Titan” processing PC’s and a dedicated high content analysis PC to analyse data from imaging experiments. These come with both commercial and open-source software, including Arivis, Imaris, Zen, ScanR, CellSens, LASX, Cellprofiler and Image-J. The facility provides training and support in use of the software.

Furthermore, we are always willing to lead and support grant applications for new equipment, where a need is identified by the core and its user groups.

Live cell HUVEC wound healing assay

Video credit: Data acquired with William Cooke

Training and access to all of our equipment is available for everyone.

Centre for Human Genetics

Old Campus Road

Roosevelt Drive

Oxford OX3 7BN

For general inquiries, and to arrange microscope training, please email us at cellular-imaging@well.ox.ac.uk. Our telephone number is: +44 1865 287568

Cellular Imaging Core Facility webpage