
Imaging Facility
Our Imaging Facility supports scientists from both of the institute’s locations, Seewiesen and Martinsried. We help design experiments including the choice of fluorophores, clearing method, image modality and possible processing and analysis pipeline. We provide theoretical and practical trainings to students and postdocs. Furthermore, we assist in designing and purchasing commercially-available microscopes as well building complex prototypes and optical setups ranging from multi-photon microscopes to behavioral arenas.
Our instruments
For staff: Detailed information on all equipment is found in our MAX intranet

Leica STELLARIS 5 DMi8 (inverted) - This is an inverted confocal microscope suitable for a variety of samples such as neuronal cell cultures, organoids and brain slices.

Leica STELLARIS 5 DM6 (upright) - This upright confocal microscope is suitable to image to image fixed samples such as whole Drosophila brains or slices.

Zeiss LSM900 (upright) – The latest addition to the Imaging Facility is a very sensitive confocal microscope. It is particularly suitable to image aquatic model organisms thanks to its water-dipping objectives.

Zeiss AxioScan Z.1 (upright) - This is a high throughput slidescanner which can automatically image up to 100 slides in with either brightfield or epi-fluorescence illumination.

Zeiss LSM700 (upright) - Upright confocal laser scanning microscope whose short beampath from the objectives to the detectors allows the detection of dim fluorescent signals.

Leica SP8 (upright) - This upright confocal laser scanning microscope is particularly suitable to image slices thanks also to its stage with wide travel range and the Leica navigator system.

Leica SP8 Matrix (upright) - This is a versatile upright confocal laser scanning microscope. It can image a variety of fixed samples from brain slices to CLARITY-cleared specimens.

Nikon Spinning disk CSU-W1 SoRa (inverted) - This microscope is the popular system of choice for live-cell experiments, thanks to its speed and very gentle illumination.

Leica THUNDER Model Organism - This stereomicroscope is a flexible tool to take overview images of a variety of samples, from small Drosophila brains to whole mice.

Miltenyi Biotec Ultramicroscope II - This lightsheet microscope can achieve fast image acquisition over a wide range of field-of-views and is capable of imaging entire (cleared) mammalian and avian brains.

Image analysis: Arivis PRO and Arivis Cloud - Our workstation has an Intel Xeon E5-2620V3 processor, 256 GB RAM, 2 TB fast SSD and a Nvidia GeForce GTX TITAN X. Users can log in remotely and analyze or visualize their data with Arivis PRO.
We also have a subscription to Arivis Cloud, where users can train complex deep learning models for image segmentation.
We also have a subscription to Arivis Cloud, where users can train complex deep learning models for image segmentation.