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

Vote for your favourite ‘Featured image’ from 2025

Posted by FocalPlane, on 19 December 2025

Throughout 2025, we highlighted some fantastic images and researchers in our ‘Featured image’ series. Here is your chance to vote for your favourite.

SfN, Then and Now: Returning to Neuroscience’s Largest Conference as a Postdoc

Posted by Sally Horton, on 17 December 2025

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) annual meeting has a reputation: enormous, extraordinary, and exhausting. This year, I returned to SfN in San Diego for the second time in my scientific journey, but for the first time as a postdoc. Although the location was the same as my first SfN as a PhD student, the experience

OMERO Outputs: Insights from the 4th BioHackathon 2025

Posted by Lea Kabjesz, on 17 December 2025

Hi all! Today I would like to share my experience participating in my first BioHackathon and point you to some new exciting features coming soon to the bioimaging software OMERO. If you are interested in participating in a hackathon yourself, but don’t know what to expect or where to start, I have prepared some insights

Imaging 4 All – 3rd Call for Applications Now Open!

Posted by deniz.saltukoglu, on 17 December 2025

Global BioImaging (GBI), the international network of cutting-edge bioimaging facilities and communities, has launched the third open call for Imaging 4 All (i4A) — a funding programme that supports researchers and imaging facility professionals based in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Through i4A, applicants can receive fully funded support to: The funding covers travel, accommodation and subsistence costs, facility access, service and training

Image Analysis course with Fiji/ImageJ

Posted by Lior Pytowski, on 17 December 2025

Online course introducing you to the basics of image analysis, including automatic segmentation, colocalisation, denoising, 3D, etc.

How do I get started with image analysis?

Posted by Rachel Lee, on 15 December 2025

Given the abundance of image analysis tools, it can be difficult to know where to get started with analyzing microscopy images. In this post, we provide a framework for getting started with image analysis that focuses on experimental design and the extraction of informative biological results.

A new version of TrackMate with improved integration of key AI algorithms and track edition improvements

Posted by Jean-Yves Tinevez, on 12 December 2025

We’re excited to announce TrackMate v8.1, the latest version of Fiji’s powerful cell and organelle tracking plugin. This release combines all the major features from v8 with important usability improvements, making TrackMate more useful and easier to use than ever before. What is TrackMate? TrackMate is an extensible, open-source tracking software designed for biologists and

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