White Blood Cells

General
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I got to capture a video of a neutrophil moving around the slide. I think there’s a few in the video, but the one in the center is the most visible. I collected this video without any staining, which might be obvious. I used a very long exposure time and a high analog gain. The LED I used was a much weaker 5 mm LED than the one that comes with the IO Rodeo kit. The video itself is actually a lossless set of PNGs, but I was only able to successfully encode a lossy video to upload to YouTube.

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That looks really nice. How did you capture live cells with inverted microscope? Did you manage to focus through the slide instead of coverslip? Are you using the camera only or with an objective too?

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Thanks! I’m using the rpi camera v2 (the one that comes with the IO Rodeo kit) and the 40x objective. Regarding the cover slip issue, I did the following:

  • drop the sample onto the slide
  • gently place the edge of the cover slip onto the slide and then let it drop on the sample. Normally I do a regular smear, but this time I did it a bit differently
  • I used vaseline as a seal. I put some onto the end of a glass rod, placed it by the edges of the cover slip, and rolled it so that a thin coating covered both the slide and cover slip
  • I repeated this for the two edges of the cover slip

I did a test run before placing it into the microscope without a sample, and it held longer than a few hours (I didn’t wait to see how long it would last). This is probably a rookie technique, but I didn’t feel like purchasing additional equipment or rebuilding the scope differently. Eventually I’ll do it using a more robust method, but for right now I have a fast approaching deadline I have to meet :stuck_out_tongue:

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That sounds awesome. Can’t wait to try that out once my components arrive. Thanks a lot

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