FlowCam - Flow Imaging Microscopy Blog

BioME’s 7th annual ME Bioscience Day was celebrated in Maine middle school classrooms over the week of November 14th, 2022. Aimed to get 6th, 7th and 8th-grade students excited about life science, the BioScience Association of Maine (BioME) extended invitations to science professionals from across the state to show students how the life sciences are being studied and applied right here in Maine. The day was able to return to a live format this year after occurring virtually in 2020 and 2021.

People often ask us, "What is FlowCam?" and we answer with one of the following:

• a flow imaging microscope
• an imaging particle analyzer
• a high-throughput dynamic microscope

Really, FlowCam is all of these things!

FlowCam is a precision instrument that captures high-resolution digital images of subvisible particles and microorganisms in a flowing liquid. With FlowCam, you can learn everything you need to know about the particles in your sample, including their size and shape, and how many there are of each type -and  FlowCam can do all of this within minutes!

Our team of particle analysis experts is ready to help you achieve your particle analysis goals across a broad array of applications ranging from biopharmaceutical and aquatic sciences to smart materials and food and beverage quality control. With our full suite of next-generation FlowCam instruments, our analytical lab is your one-stop resource for technology assessment, method development, and customized application testing. Our depth of experience with flow imaging microscopy and image-based particle characterization allows us to develop solutions tailored to your specific analytical needs.  

In order to gain the most comprehensive understanding of particles in their samples, researchers often employ several instruments as part of their overall particle analysis scheme. Different technologies will assess different physical attributes of the particles and thereby offer scientists complementary data that are useful in validating their analyses. Even when two instruments perform essentially the same analytical technique, measurement differences between platforms may reveal physical property aspects that would otherwise go unnoticed. 

Flow Imaging Microscopy is a fast and automated method to see highly-resolved digital images of microscopic particles in a flowing liquid. Using FlowCam, you can very quickly learn about the size, count, shape, and identity of the particles in your sample.

Flow Imaging Microscopy began as a novel concept when the first flow imaging microscope – FlowCam – was developed at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Then-available tools, a microscope for plankton identification and a flow cytometer for counting, were time-consuming and labor-intensive, so the scientists at Bigelow sought to develop a better method.

VisualSpreadsheet^® is FlowCam's powerful, customizable software program featuring interactive particle image and data analysis. We recently released VisualSpreadsheet Version 6.0.2, which is now available for all FlowCam instruments currently running VisualSpreadsheet 6. Please get in touch with us about upgrades if your FlowCam is currently running VisualSpreadsheet 4 or 5.

Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are gaining attention as effective drug delivery vehicles, especially since their successful use in the COVID-19 vaccines. Both Moderna and Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 vaccines depend on LNPs to deliver messenger RNA (mRNA), a delicate nucleic acid molecule, to the cytosol of target cells unharmed.

LNPs are a spherical assembly of lipid and/or lipid-like molecules that encapsulate and protect the therapeutic nucleic acid payload in the patient’s body. Like protein-based biotherapeutics, LNPs are subject to aggregation and other forms of degradation during storage periods and following stresses like freeze-thaw cycles or agitation due to sample (mis)handling.

We'll be attending the annual Water Quality Technology Conference in Cincinnati, OH, next month. On Wednesday, November 16th, at 10:30 am, Polly Barrowman will be presenting a case study with Hunter Adams, (the Water Quality Supervisor at the City of Wichita Falls Cypress Environmental Laboratory) about their implementation of flow imaging microscopy. Polly and Hunter demonstrate how monitoring particle concentrations and morphology using FlowCam at various points in the treatment system enabled Hunter's team to address elevated particle counts.

Last week we hosted our representatives from Yokogawa's international offices for a week-long FlowCam Training Summit. Yokogawa teams and our other FlowCam sales partners traveled to our headquarters in Maine from countries including Japan, South Korea, South Africa, Ireland, Brazil, Singapore, Bahrain, and Taiwan. 

A central challenge with particle analysis in biotherapeutics is the wide size range of particles that may be present, including particles from the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), as well as excipients and contaminants. These particles can be as small as a few nanometers (e.g., oligomer-sized protein aggregates, individual viruses) or large enough to be seen by the unaided eye (e.g., visible API aggregates). While several analytical techniques exist for particle monitoring, each can only analyze particles within a finite size range.