MICROSCOPY IMAGING ANALYSIS
Performance, expertise and solutions for photonic microscopy
MIA Cellavie and reproducible microscopy
In 2006, the vision behind the foundation of Microscopy Imaging Analysis Cellavie Inc. was that for getting robust answers to questions asked by research, medicine and science, microscopy had to be artifact-free, reproducible and quantitative. In the following years, MIA Cellavie developed, implemented and applied a group de protocols and procedures in line with this founding vision. These protocols and procedures, coming from the world-wide community, led to the publication of a group of ISO norms specific to microscopy. From 2014 to 2019, as a consultant and data analyst of confocal microscopy for the COS (Centre for Open Science, Charlottesville VA) within the RPCB (“Reproducibility Project in Cancer Biology, https://lnkd.in/d4Q3gszW), we witnessed the importance of the FAIR (findable, accessible, inter-operable, and reproducible) principles for microscopie. In the spring of 2020, following on the presentation of diverse microscopy specific ISO norms in late 2019, a few dozens of specialists in the field from around the world gathered under the QUAREP-LiMi (Quality Assessment and Reproducibility for Instruments & Images in Light Microscopy, https://quarep.org/). Judith LACOSTE was among this group. In the fall of 2021, the group was counting 332 persons world-wide. An important portion of the highly collaborative and collective work of the QUAREP-LiMi members, including members of BINA (Bio-Imaging North America) et du CBI (Canada Bio-Imaging), is now available in the December issue of Nature Methods entitled “Reporting and Reproducibility in Microscopy” (https://www.nature.com/collections/djiciihhjh).
THE VERY FIRST TEST SLIDE TO GET
FOR A QUICK AND INEXPENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF MICROSCOPY IMAGE QUALITY. Since the beginning of MIA Cellavie Inc. in 2006, we did interventions (such as preventive maintenances, service calls, quality control measurements and trainings) on over 600 different microscopes in the Montréal area, Canada. These microscopes are as simple as clinical microscopes, or as complex as STED super-resolution systems. Each member of the team owns a simple H&E stain slide which contains a smear of epithelial cells, often speckled with bacteria. We get these slides from public hospital cytology labs. Usually, once the patient labels are removed, these slides end up in the garbage. Each one of us looking at this simple test slide on a daily basis, we develop an instinct for quickly picking issues related to the overall quality of the image formation of the microscope. This is done in transmitted light bright field microscopy since there are a lot of photons involved in image formation of that modality. Of course, this is done AFTER Köhler alignment. Even if working with a super-resolution microscope and/or fluorescence, a quick look using this completely free test slide in transmitted light will reveal issues related to poor image formation much more quickly and clearly than in fluorescence microscopy.