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 David Grainger

Posted by FocalPlane, on 29 August 2025

Our featured image, acquired by David Grainger, is a colour-coded depth projection of the blood endothelial cells of the E14.5 mouse embryonic thymus and surrounding structures. A 200 μm-thick vibratome section was immunostained for endomucin and imaged on a Zeiss LSM980 confocal microscope and depth-encoded using a rainbow LUT before performing a maximum intensity projection.

An introduction to Microscopy New Zealand

Posted by Alfonso, on 28 August 2025

Microscopy New Zealand (MNZ) started in 1978 as a periodic newsletter as a way for electron microscopists to share advice and news around New Zealand. In July 1980, the New Zealand Society of Electron Microscopy Incorporated was officially registered as an incorporated society, and in 1996, its scope was broadened to include all microscopy techniques

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.

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