For all questions related to Light Microscopy please contact:

Kai Betteridge (Light Microscopy Facility Manager)

Ross Scrimgeour (Microscopist & Image Analyst)

Queenie Lai (Microscopist & Image Analyst)

All of us can be contacted on (LightMicroscopyChelsea@icr.ac.uk)

If you publish a paper, please use this text in your acknowledgment section of the paper to reference us:

We acknowledge the Chelsea Light Microscopy facility at The Institute of Cancer Research for providing expert support on microscopy and image analysis. Their support was instrumental in achieving the results presented in this paper. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14851951 

If you use a system, can you please make sure you turn them off properly directly after use. Please don’t leave anything on. However please do not turn off the analysis computers. We do use them to work remotely and they have a number of site licences on them, hence these computers need to be on for users to remotely access some of our software.

The facility offers microscopy services.

The Light Microscopy Facility contains the following Microscopes:

Time lapse experiments:

• A booking of over 8h (charged for the first 5 hours at full rate for every 24hr period).
• Strictly for imaging live cells over time or running automated robotic imaging.
• Time lapse experiments should be done outside office hours (8pm-8am, Monday to Friday) or over the weekend (Friday 8:00pm until Monday 8:00am) as a priority if possible

Software for Microscopy

The microscopy facility in Chelsea has licenses for a number of image analysis packages, along with experience in using many different programs. If you are unsure about any aspect of image analysis, please email Kai Betteridge (kai.betteridge@icr.ac.uk).

It is also much easier to develop your analysis pipeline before acquiring most of your data, please plan ahead and speak with the team!

Resources for Microscopy

Very good websites for general microscopy here. The Nikon website is also a very good rescource for microscopy knowledge https://www.microscopyu.com/ 

iBiology training movies for microscopy. They have a good series on microscopy as well as one on image analysis. 

Guidelines for publishing microscopy data can be found here.

Tool to check some common stainings in a cell. https://www.thermofisher.com/uk/en/home/life-science/lab-data-management-analysis-software/lab-apps/cell-staining-tool.html 

Data Storage

The facility has a server that you can move the images to. Please do not leave data on the computers that operate the instruments. The server is a temporary storage. The data will be deleted after 30 days. You can move the data to the RDS for permanent storage directly from the server.

The server is mapped on every computer look for this icon.

\\chlsa03h\imaging

Password: !5-a9HPC

Users may only access the instruments if they have adequate storage on the ICR’s RDS or their own server/NAS that can be mapped directly to the instrument or its associated analysis computer. For use of the high content microscopes and lightsheets, storage space on a NAS or RDS must be avaliable before you use the instrument is permitted.

In the case of the Opera Phenix, and the Image Xpress High Content Microscopes, data is temporarily housed directly on a seperate server to the instrument and any data over 30 days old will be deleted without warning from that server. This data is not backed up, so back it up immediately after your expoeriment to avoid losing it!

The facillity will not, and cannot, be held responsibile for storing research data. It is solely the user's responsibility to back up and store data aquired within the facility.

User Group

The user group are a selct group of users who can provide feedback and implement change in the facility. The user group holds meeting with the Manager of the facility (Kai Betteridge) every 4 months and are there to provide feedback. If you have suggestions or feedback about the facility, please contact someone from the user group and they can report this in the meeting. All suggestions then go to RICe (Research Infrastructure oversight Comittee) to be voted on before the can be implemented. Here is the user group:

Vicky Bousgouni Vicky.Bousgouni@icr.ac.uk 

Dragomir Krastev Dragomir.Krastev@icr.ac.uk 

Jeff Francis Jeff.Francis@icr.ac.uk 

Peter Martin peter.martin@icr.ac.uk 

David Coupe david.coupe@icr.ac.uk

Vivianne Lebrec Vivianne.Lebrec@icr.ac.uk

Chang Huang Chang.Huang@icr.ac.uk

Leadership 

Tina Daviter | Head of Core Research Facility
Phone: 5510
Email: Tina.Daviter@icr.ac.uk 

Location and hours of operation

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Contacts