A German company seems to have found a solution. The soon-to-be-released Cellscreen workstation from Innovatis of Bielefeld, Germany, allows for quick, easy, and precise measurements of total cell numbers for cultures grown in multiwell plates. Two years in the making, this product requires no dyes and no need to expose cultures to a nonsterile environment. "The first version will work only with suspended cells, but the next version will also work with adherent cells," says Gerd Emde, Cellscreen's product manager. Emde notes that the system works for 24-, 48-, and 96-well plates.
The Cellscreen system consists of an inverted microscope using UIS optics and an apochromatic relay lens system. Attached to this is a monochrome, autofocus camera with a progressive scan image sensor and automatic shutter, allowing for an effective resolution of 1.3 million pixels. Images are passed into a computer workstation with optimized software, which coordinates the separate hardware ...
