Livecyte® Cell Analysis System

The livecyte is a very user-friendly piece of equipment, which can generate a ton of data. The morphometric analysis of the cells reflects to their physiology and this instrument can reveal aspects that were not known or identified before. It is easy to use and the support team are very helpful and they work by their customers to develop it further according to their needs. I have been very satisfied with livecyte and I believe that soon it will become very popular. Great equipment, great team and exciting new data and fields to explore...

Review Date: 15 Feb 2023 | Phasefocus

The most amazing software. Incredible data Gold standard service. If you haven’t used one …. You’re missing out

Review Date: 30 Mar 2022 | Phasefocus

Livecyte has allowed us to move away from simple endpoint assays and toward live single-cell analysis. The user-friendly interface and intuitive software mean it can easily be used to setup and analyse experiments, without requiring a lot of training. The analysis software is easy to use, while also allowing complex in-depth analysis of cell behaviour. The customer service is excellent, Phasefocus have always been quick to respond with help and advice.

Review Date: 11 Feb 2022 | Phasefocus

As an early adopter, we have had the system for a few years now, and continue to be impressed with the high-quality data results, as well as the highly professional and fully engaged support we still continue to receive. I have worked in long-term live-cell time-lapse for over two decades, and an unachieved dream of mine used to be to want to be able to segment individual cells acquired in a non-fluorescence channel (e.g. phase-contrast, for many reasons, mostly to be able to minimize photo damage and perturbations to gather metrics on their more native state). Unachieved despite trying many, many different combinations of image analysis software to segment non-labelled cells non-manually. Now with this ptychography based Livecyte we are able to achieve this (I remember being excited upon first hearing about it in a lab meeting and putting my hand up first to volunteer in organizing the demo). Not only that, this turn-key system is extremely easy to use, and therefore easy to train new users in, who are mostly independent after one training session. The supporting literature is good e.g. 'Quick Start Guide'. Last but not least, the Livecyte Analysis dashboards are quite an amazing tool for a rapid overview of your results before a deeper exploration. A wonderful microscope providing some truly wonderful data, thank you.

Review Date: 1 Oct 2021 | Phasefocus

High quality equipment and it is easy to use.

Review Date: 25 Sept 2021 | Phasefocus

Livecyte was installed in our departmental cell facility about a year ago and now is one of the most used instruments with an always full calendar. The high quality of the images and videos obtained in label-free cell imaging is one of the greatest strengths. Moreover, the analysis software is very user-friendly and allows to obtain a huge amount of high-quality data in each experiment. We used the platform mainly for proliferation and motility analysis and the results were excellent and reproducible. Another strength is the great customer support: the Phasefocus team is always ready to help the user during design of experiments, acquisition, and data analysis.

Review Date: 6 Sept 2021 | Phasefocus

The Livecyte is an inverted live imaging & analysis platform that couples quantitative phase imaging with fluorescent imaging. The platform integrates the full pipeline - it contains the scope, the environmental chamber, the QPI and fluorescence optics, separate computers for live image acquisition, analysis, and data storage, and software for acquisition and analysis. This integration is one major strength of the system. To be clear - it is not an "out of the box / plug and play" platform, exactly - as it is too complex of a system. Instead, as part of the purchase, Phasefocus sends a scientist to assemble and calibrate the rig. As a consequence, the system uses high-end components and is both customizable and upgradable. As a second strength, we have enjoyed incredible customer service starting with this initial set up and also continuing through the 2+ years we've been using the equipment. This includes both a responsive team for troubleshooting technical issues, as well as helping with custom analyses. A third strength is the user-friendliness of both the acquisition and the analysis softwares. In both cases, the software is intuitive and holds your hand for setting up standard live imaging and analysis experiments. These interfaces are great for standard questions like comparing cell proliferation, growth or motility. In addition, both softwares are also "deep", in that with training, more advanced set-up and more advanced analyses can also be conducted. The customization of they system is also nice - we have ours set up with a large range of objectives and 7 channels of fluorescence, all of which as desired. We have run into a variety of technical issues, but the Phasefocus team has worked with us to solve all of them at no charge. In comparison, having used other high end imaging systems, I would say we have not run into more than the usual technical issues. Bottom line, this is a high end fully integrated "plate-to-data" live-QPI/fluorescence imaging platform, with a user-friendly interface, ability to run complex analyses, and a knowledgeable, friendly and responsive after sales care team. It is probably one of the more expensive QPI platforms out there, but remains an excellent value if you need the capabilities it brings to the table. Regarding uses for the platform, we use it to image large-well plates (6-wells) down to 96-wells. The former if we want to look deeply into a few conditions, the latter for screens. All plates we have tried are easy to set up. When setting up any plate, there is an intuitive and easy interface that allows us to perform live 2x-4x scanning to find and place ROIs. Multiple objectives / channels can be used for ROIs in the same well / experiment. This lets us identify the exact cells we are interested in monitoring. We routinely perform live imaging for 2-6 days and have set up experiments as long as 14 days. Image processing occurs as images are acquired so analysis can start shortly after acquisition is complete. The QPI allows us to visualize all cells, regardless of what fluorescence they are expressing. We use this primarily to track expression levels of live reporters over time, monitor how uniform or heterogeneous expression is, how it changes with cell cycle, over generations, with morphologic / behavior changes, etc. It has proven very useful for primary cultures or situations where we do not want to select for clonal populations. The default cell segmentation does a great job, even for morphological complex cells, and it can also be tweaked as necessary. Same for cell tracking - it does a good default job and provides the tools for editing as needed. The analyses allow for a quick read of differences in proliferation, mass, motility, and fluorescence. We also use the more advanced tools provided to look at heterogeneity and relationships between QPI features and fluorescence.

Review Date: 16 Jul 2021 | Phasefocus

The Livecyte2 provides an easy to use platform for a wide range of applications - setup is so simple that an untrained user can have an assay running in under 20 minutes, which means that even junior students can be generating impactful research data without the need for lengthy training on other systems that often yield questionable results given the user-skill-dependent nature of the outputs of other conventional light microscopes. The Livecyte2 gives the same quality of result every time. Analysis capabilities are far-reaching and on first use appear simple (in a good way!), but there's an iceberg of analytical possibilities that truly opens up after some use, and the ability to revisit experiments and derive metrics that might not have been part of the original design for new insights is exceptionally valuable. The team at PhaseFocus are friendly and efficient, and have been incredibly helpful as we start to integrate the platform into our workflows.

Review Date: 16 Jul 2021 | Phasefocus

Worth the cost for cell analysis.

Review Date: 19 Jun 2021 | Phasefocus

As a core facility instrument, it is being used nearly non-stop by many different groups. The instrument is saturated and giving great reproducible, novel and exciting results.

Review Date: 19 Oct 2018 | Phasefocus