Imaging Facility
The imaging facility is equipped with state-of-the-art hard- and software. Our facility is equipped with a motorized upright Leica DM5500 epifluorescence microscope, an inverted Leica SP8x confocal microscope with white light laser (470-670 nm), and an inverted Leica SPE confocal microscope.
Furthermore, our facility is equipped with a motorized inverted Leica DMI6000 B epifluorescence microscope and an inverted Zeiss confocal microscope (LSM 780) especially designed for live cell imaging experiments. A laser capture microdissection system is available via access to a PALM MicroBeam 4 system (Carl Zeiss) equipped with a temperature controled heating chamber, for laser microdissection of tissue sections or live cells under fluorescence (Colibri LEC illumination) or bright light illumination (subsidised by a Hercules Foundation grant, AKUL-46).
The confocal microscopes enable us to perform FRAP, emission- and excitation fingerprinting, 3D-reconstruction and 3D-time-lapse imaging (4D-imaging) of living organisms and cells in the temperature-, humidity- and CO2-O2 controlled incubation chamber. We build up expertise in 3D-time-lapse imaging of several different cell types such as vascular endothelium cells, pericytes, neurons, as well as electroporated brain slices and zebra fish in normoxic and hypoxic conditions.
Morphometric (stereological) analysis occurs through semi-automatic macros written with the latest Leica MetaMorph software packages, enabling us to analyze several dozens of parameters.
We actively collaborate with other researchers and core facilities to perform state-of-the-art imaging, such as superresolution imaging (dSTORM/PALM, Johan Hofkens, KULeuven); second harmonic generation and Airyscan imaging (Pieter Vanden Berghe, Cell Imaging Core, KULeuven); Spinning disk, SIM, TEM, SEM and FIB-SEM imaging in close collaboration with the VIB Bio Imaging Core (Sebastian Munck, Saskia Lippens, Natalia Gunko).
For an overview on the expertise of the different microscopy core facilities at the Biomedical Sciences Group (KULeuven) and the VIB Bio Imaging Core we refer to:
http://gbiomed.kuleuven.be/english/corefacilities/microscopy
Our facility is also a member of the European Light Microscopy Initiative.