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

Featured image with the Hughes lab

Posted by FocalPlane, on 20 December 2024

Our featured image, acquired by Sanja Sviben, is an immuno-scanning electron micrograph of a primary cilium, taken from an intact human pancreatic islet. The cilium is a microtubule-based structure and is seen here labeled with colloidal gold for acetylated alpha tubulin.

Our 2024 FocalPlane correspondents – Daniel Doucet, Subhajit Dutta and Greg Redpath

Posted by FocalPlane, on 19 December 2024

We had the pleasure of working with Daniel, Subhajit and Greg as our FocalPlane correspondents in 2024. You can read some of their posts here and look out for a few more coming out in 2025. As the year comes to a close, we took the opportunity to hear from them about their research and

The Crick BioImage Analysis Symposium (2024): conference overview

Posted by zeinab rekad, on 18 December 2024

Have you missed this year’s Crick BioImage Analysis Symposium (CBIAS2024), or you want to know how this conference went to apply for next year’s edition? Here is our recap of this conference featuring impressions from 3 microscopists coming from different research backgrounds: Zeinab Rekad, postdoctoral Research Associate, biologist, super-user and here for the 3rd time

Become a FocalPlane correspondent

Posted by FocalPlane, on 17 December 2024

Are you enthusiastic about science communication and looking for a chance to broaden your writing experience alongside your research activities? FocalPlane, our community site for microscopists, is looking to appoint three scientists as correspondents who will play a key role in developing and writing content over the coming year.

VolumeEM: An Interview with Kedar Narayan

Posted by Daniel Doucet, on 14 December 2024

I had the pleasure of sitting down with recent awardee of the Alan Agar Royal Microscopy Award for Electron Microscopy, Dr. Kedar Narayan. Dr. Narayan is very involved with the grassroots Volume EM (vEM) community, and has used his time at Frederick National Laboratory to not only benefit cancer research, but microscopy technique as a

Probes 101 – How to choose a fluorescent probe for your imaging experiment

Posted by Lina El Hajji, on 14 December 2024

Fluorescence microscopy is a powerful tool for the visualization of the intricate biological processes occurring within biological organisms. Just like you can make important pieces of information pop up in their notes using colorful highlighters, biologists have at hand a large toolkit of “highlighters” to make their favorite targets stand out in the complex cellular

Microscopy preprints – new tools and techniques in imaging

Posted by FocalPlane, on 13 December 2024

Here is a curated selection of preprints posted recently on new tools and techniques in imaging. Let us know if we are missing any recent preprints that are on your reading list!

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