Hi all,
I am considering options for thermal imaging in a well plate. I have seen infrared camera used in vivo but so far no papers in vitro with commercially available resources.
Could anyone make a suggestion for thermal monitoring in a 96 well plate? It wouldn't necessarily require imaging of individual cells (4-20x), only wells for comparing average effects.
Due to assay interference, fluorescent dye indicators are not an option.
Thanks for the input!
Hello John,
If you are talking about imaging your rack from the top, and using traditional cameras, the setup in this paper might be useful: Conference Paper Utilization of thermal imaging for monitoring in vitro processes
As far as I know, well plates are often made from plastics, which are opaque in the thermal wavelengths, so imaging is possible only from the top, which has an unobstructed view of the wells.
If you are thinking of setting up a setup from scratch, a FLIR one Pro or Seek thermal camera might be the most affordable options, although their battery life is shorter than you might need.
I hope this information is useful to you.
JM
Most thermal imagers will probably have a wide enough field-of-view to image the whole plate as most have focusing optics. However, the smaller the array size of the camera, and the larger the plate will limit your spatial resolution. You can get cameras with arrays ranging from 60x80 pixels to around 1280x1024 so it really depends on your needs (and how deep your pockets are).
Are you trying to get quantitative temperature measurements from your experiment? If so, then there will be a number of obstacles to overcome.
The accuracy of the camera out of the box. Many camera manufacturers state +/- 2 °C or 2% (whichever is greater) for their commercial cameras. The FLIR One mentioned above is stated as +/-5°C or 5%, or +/-10°C or 10%, depending on the gain setting.
The non-uniformity of the camera. Every camera will have some non-uniformity, and this should be assessed where possible.
The size-of-source effect. This where the reading of a measurement area will vary depending on the temperature of the surrounding area.
Also the emissivity of what you are trying to infer the temperature of, as well as the ambient temperature.
Thank you both Aaron and Jyotirmoy for your feedback. The detail and practical advice is much appreciated. It should serve us well in pricing out different options in the coming months. These cameras would likely be used for semi-quantitative work at best, qualitative at worst.
I wish you the best in your life and research.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Physical Sciences
- Optics