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Making light work of it

25 March 2009

Governor of Victoria, Professor David de Kretser, Monash Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard Larkins and Associate Professor Martin Lackmann from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

More than 1700 Melbourne biomedical researchers can now study live cells under world-class conditions.

Monash Micro Imaging centre has opened a $4 million Advanced Optical Imaging Facility that provides high-powered automated microscopes, some worth half a million dollars, for medical and life science research.

Located at the Clayton campus, the facility houses 13 integrated microscopes from companies such as Leica Microsystems, Olympus and Nikon. The facility acts as a hub for two other imaging nodes at Monash Medical Centre and the Alfred Medical Research and Education Precinct.

It was launched on 17 March by the Governor of Victoria, Professor David de Kretser, who compared the way he used to work on old manual microscopes with the hi-tech opportunities now afforded to researchers, including access and control of remote instruments.

The centre includes a new OptiPortal (a video wall display) - 20 connected screens that can display and transfer high resolution images.

At the launch, Monash Micro Imaging researchers demonstrated its abilities, remotely operating a microscope in Germany and another in the adjacent laboratories. The images were then displayed side by side on the OptiPortal.

The images were then switched from a "Google Earth" type view of a whole tumour on one microscope, to focus on a single cell in a complementary specimen on another microscope.

This ability allows researchers to create a virtual microscope, synthesising new information and possible new data from integrating multiple imaging modes.