FocalPlane - Where biology meets microscopy

Welcome to FocalPlane

FocalPlane is a community site for anyone who uses microscopy in their research. It is a place where you can interact with a global community of imaging scientists, engineers, chemists, and bioimage analysts.

FocalPlane is your site and once registered, you are free to share a blog post, add an image to our gallery, post a job advert or put up an event listing.

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Recent posts

STED Microscopy User Group, September 11, 12 PM EST

Posted by Ethan A. Perets, on 23 August 2025

The next BioImaging North America and Canada BioImaging STED user group will take place via Zoom on September 11 at 12 PM ET/11 AM CT/9 AM PT. Henrietta “Henny” Bennett will deliver the presentation, “A community approach to STED resolution benchmarking using Fourier Ring Correlation (FRC)” (University Health Network, Toronto), followed by panel and community discussion with Henny, James Jonkman

Microscopy preprints – bioimage analysis

Posted by FocalPlane, on 22 August 2025

Here is a curated selection of preprints published recently. In this post, we focus specifically on bioimage analysis and data management.

FocalPlane features… meets preLights

Posted by FocalPlane, on 20 August 2025

For our second collaborative FocalPlane features… webinar we have teamed up with preLights, our sister community site. This webinar will be hosted by Felipe Del Valle Batalla (University of Edinburgh, UK) and Vibha Singh (Princess Margaret Cancer Research Tower (UHN), Canada), two members of the preLights community (known as preLighters), who have selected two recent

Featured image with Ludovica Altieri

Posted by FocalPlane, on 15 August 2025

Our featured image, acquired by Ludovica Altieri, shows murine primary cortical neurons developing interconnections. The cells are stained for neuronal tubulin (TUJI antibody, cyan) and DNA (DAPI, blue). Cultures were prepared by dissecting cortices from mouse embryos (E18), then mechanically dissociating single cells for plating. Explanted primary neurons placed in culture regress several stages back,

Microscopy preprints – applications in biology

Posted by FocalPlane, on 12 August 2025

Here is a curated selection of preprints published recently. In this post, we share preprints that use microscopy tools to answer questions in biology.

Connecting Researchers Through Bioimaging: Reflections from UCL’s BioImage Interest Group

Posted by Courtney Lancaster, on 11 August 2025

Bioimaging: A bridge across scales and disciplines Bioimaging has become a cornerstone in modern biological research, allowing scientists to visualise the intricate structures of cells and organisms. It also allows us to bridge biological scales — from whole organisms down to molecules. Beyond its beautiful images, bioimaging provides crucial quantitative insights into a whole host

From Click to Code: Reproducibility in Bio-image Analysis

Posted by Mara Lampert, on 5 August 2025

Reproducibility is at the heart of good science. But when it comes to bio-image analysis, it can feel difficult to achieve. Complex datasets, shifting software environments, and countless manual tweaks often make it hard to retrace your own steps and share workflows with others. An aim should be to package the entire analysis, like code, data

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