Miltenyi Biotec launches fully automated light-sheet microscope

Miltenyi Biotec, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, has released the UltraMicroscope Blaze, a fully automated light-sheet microscope.

The new instrument enables users to image an entire mouse or multiple samples at subcellular resolution in 3-D. Automated light-sheet imaging of multiple samples together holds the potential to accelerate basic and biomedical research in the field of immunooncology and neuroscience.

Offering a new perspective on organisms, on how they are structured, and how they work, the UltraMicroscope Blaze’s technology, together with the company’s specially developed MI Plan objective series, allows imaging across scales, from whole transparent mice down to subcellular structures. Benefits of the new UltraMicroscope Blaze include the following:

• Full automation. The UltraMicroscope Blaze enables automated sample release and smooth switching between different objectives and magnification lenses while the autofocus feature keeps images sharp.
• Imaging of a large sample or multiple samples. The large sample chamber can either host an entire cleared mouse model or allow automated imaging of multiple samples. Such samples can then be imaged sequentially, without the need for manual intervention or monitoring.
• Cutting-edge optics. Optimized illumination guarantees homogeneous fluorescence excitation, and the specially developed MI Plan objective series delivers unprecedented image quality. In combination with the automated magnification changer, MI Plan objectives can achieve a total magnification from 0.6× to 30× for subcellular imaging. Additionally, the objectives are compatible with all available clearing solutions, providing researchers with full experimental flexibility.

“The UltraMicroscope Blaze allows us to see every single cancer metastasis in whole bodies of transparent mice, and we can also see if drugs are targeting all those tiny micrometastases,” says Ali Ertürk, director of the institute for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine at the German Research Center for Environmental Health, whose team was among the first users of the instrument. “The UltraMicroscope Blaze will be a powerful tool for drug development in oncology.”

For neuroscientists, the UltraMicroscope Blaze offers the potential to generate 3-D images of whole brains in unprecedented detail, facilitating studies on the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease in mouse models, for example.

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