Description:

As part of the drive to create integrated experimental platforms bringing together established and developing techniques we made it a goal to incorporate low light and luminescent imaging within the BRC. For luminescence we are targeting the luciferin/luciferase assay for ATP. Success with this imager, for which there are no commercial sources, will have an immediate impact on several user projects interested in matters of metabolism. For looking at populations of cells we have also sought to develop a simpler but effective photon counting system.

Progress:

An FPGA based video signal processor is used to find photon events in a NTSC video signal. The events are buffered and sent to a computer where our software renders them and logs data from regions of interest. The collection and imaging system is complete. Only miner improvements are likely to take place in the future.