Intelligent microscopes for detecting rare biological events

One of Manley's fluorescence microscopes. EPFL / Hillary Sanctuary - EPFL biophysicists have developed control software that optimizes how fluorescence microscopes collect data on living samples. Their control loop, used to image mitochondrial and bacterial sites of division in detail, is released as an open source plug-in and could inspire a new generation of intelligent microscopes. Imagine you're a PhD candidate with a fluorescent microscope and a sample of live bacteria. What's the best way use these resources to obtain detailed observations of bacterial division from the sample? You may be tempted to forgo food and rest, to sit at the microscope non-stop and acquire images when bacterial finally division starts. (It can take hours for one bacterium to divide!) It's not as crazy as it sounds, since manual detection and acquisition control is widespread in many of the sciences. Artboard by Willi Stepp © 2022 EPFL - Alternatively, you may want to set the microscope to take images indiscriminately and as often as possible.