User friendly and powerful software for automated detection and isolation of single cells and colonies

The plates and dishes containing the sample are scanned automatically by a high-resolution camera employing a motorized microscope stage. Plates are selected from a plate library containing the most common commercial plate formats as well as allowing creating customized formats. Additional plates, dishes or slides can be added easily if required.

Depending on application requirements scans can be done in bright field, phase contrast or up to 6 fluorescence channels. All imaging parameters, from camera settings (i.e. exposure time), to hardware settings (i.e. filter settings) and illumination parameters, are stored in predefined imaging configurations. This allows switching between different imaging setups with a simple mouse click. For scanning any combination of predefined imaging configurations can be chosen to acquire multispectral images over a variety of channels and illumination methods.

All stored images of the scan are combined by the software into an overview image of the scanned area:

During this step all stored images are analyzed and target cells and colonies are detected automatically based on parameters defined by the operator.

For each detected cells or colony in each recorded channel the software is calculating a panel of morphological measurements like area, diameter, shape, sphericity (roundness) and others.  Using filter gates on those parameters allows filtering of the analysis results to specifically detect only target cells and colonies.

A user-friendly preview function allows real-time verification and adjustment of the analysis settings.

All parameters can be saved as predefined analysis settings that allow for easy routine analysis of standard experiments.

The CellCelector facilitates a very gentle picking process with high rates of viability of the picked cells or colonies. Therefore the CellCelector is perfectly suited for further cell cultivation, single cell cloning or various molecular analysis methods.

The CellCelector software supports this by giving the operator access to a wide range of picking parameters (e.g. aspiration and dispensing speeds, volumes, picking height etc.). These parameters can be adjusted and optimized individually for ideal picking results from individual single cells, clones from suspension or semi-solid media to adherent colonies.

Optimizing these parameters allow to not only pick objects from standard cell culture dishes or well plates but also from membranes, filters or microscope slides.

During picking cells are traced from their source position to their destination plate and well. The software also shows a live image during picking giving the operator great microscopic visibility of the cell picking procedure facilitating easy picking parameter optimization.

For quality control purposes the software automatically saves images immediately before and after each pick allowing a later review of the picking results (in BF and/or any fluorescent channel).  Optionally the software can verify successful picking automatically recording the status of each pick in the pick list.

The complete experiment data is listed and documented GLP-compliant on the documentation page of the software. All data can be exported quickly and easily for documentation and archiving.

Each detected/picked object can be identified by its unique ID and can be tracked through the complete process from source to destination well.

All imaging and numeric data as well as microscopic high-quality before and after picking images of all picked cells and clones are stored in the CellCelector software database. Source and destination position of each cells are recorded in the same list. This way the imaging and picking data can be easily revisited later once downstream data (e.g. PCR or cultivation data) becomes available.