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.

Create an account to share your story or to stay up-to-date with the latest news.

Join or access here

Recent posts

Featured image with Ciarán Butler Hallissey

Posted by FocalPlane, on 13 September 2024

Our featured image, acquired by Ciarán Butler Hallissey, is a maximum-intensity projection of rat hippocampal neurons processed with ultrastructure expansion microscopy (U-ExM) and captured with a spinning disk confocal microscope. Find out more about the image and Ciarán’s research below. More about the image: Expansion microscopy physically increases the size of your sample to improve

Frontiers in Bioimaging 2024 (Oxford, UK)

Posted by Stefania Marcotti, on 12 September 2024

Frontiers in BioImaging is coming up soon! This year’s meeting will be held in Oxford on November 11th and 12th. We have a great line up of speakers covering Spatial Omics, Tissue Mechanics, Clinical Imaging, Image Analysis, and Expansion Microscopy (listed below). We will also have a special session with Mark Leake, chair of

SAFE Labs Survey

Posted by Pip Coen, on 11 September 2024

We need your help to optimise the SAFE Labs Handbook before it is disseminated throughout the academic community. Please complete our this survey to help optimize this tool for the academic community. This handbook is an outcome of the 2024 SAFE Labs workshop, where new bioscience group leaders from across Europe discussed Starting Aware, Fair,

AI: A disruption in science, technology, philosophy, art and society.

Posted by Jair Sánchez, on 10 September 2024

Artificial intelligence has emerged as a beacon of innovation, offering not only groundbreaking solutions but also raising profound questions that remind us of the ever-present challenge of understanding ourselves and what it means to be human. Through intricate mathematical models, we now possess tools to approach and reflect on some of the most profound inquiries

Microscopy preprints – bioimage analysis

Posted by FocalPlane, on 6 September 2024

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

From Microscope to Macro-Scope: Same Sobek, New Glyphs

Posted by Daniel Doucet, on 5 September 2024

Thousands of years ago, the Ancient Egyptians depicted their numerous gods on hieroglyphics. One of which is an amalgamation of crocodile and man – Sobek, the god of the Nile River. These sacred carvings (from the classical Greek “heiros”, sacred; “glyphikos”, carving) have to be deciphered carefully by historians who are far removed from the

Interview with Piyush Daga

Posted by Helen Zenner, on 3 September 2024

Piyush was one of the three-minute talk presenters at our recent science communication event, SciCommConnect. At the event, which we co-hosted with the Node and preLights, we were treated to fantastic talks on a range of topics. Piyush’s talk really stood out to us, not least because of the striking microscopy image on his slide.

View more posts …