PPBI

Optical Imaging & Microscopy Platform

Head: Davide Accardi, Ph. D.

The Advanced BioImaging and BioOptics Experimental (ABBE) Platform provides the equipment and expertise to support Champalimaud Foundation researchers in the acquisition of high-quality microscopy data. The platform assists users throughout the complete imaging pipeline, including project discussions to identify the most appropriate imaging strategy, detailed technical training, and support in image processing, analysis, and visualization.
The ABBE platform is managed by an international team of biophysicists led by Dr. Davide Accardi and brings together expertise from light-sheet microscopy to super-resolution imaging. The facility is, therefore, able to offer multi-scale capacity, imaging protein interactions to whole organisms. The team also represents the Champalimaud Foundation on an international level through conferences and committees. Through these networks, the platform works with industry and other academic experts to arrange local demonstrations of new technologies and training events.
The ABBE platform serves over 250 concurrent users who collectively book approximately 20,000 hours of instrument time each year. The technologies available are three wide-field microscopes, including a fully automated slide scanner for high-volume imaging, two confocal laser scanning systems, one of which is capable of sub-diffraction resolutions down to 140 nm, and a light-sheet system, which provides fast four-dimensional imaging of large samples at low excitation power as well as three-dimensional observations of fixed and cleared tissues up to 1cm³.
In addition to supporting basic imaging, the platform is able to collaborate with researchers needing more advanced techniques such as fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP), laser ablation, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), optogenetic, single laser photo-conversion and -activation within confined volumes.
To maintain a high standard of imaging, the ABBE platform also runs in-house characterizations and a biweekly quality assessment programme to monitor microscope performance. The platform additionally carries out its own research on method optimization and collaborates with other Champalimaud Foundation platforms to customize the sample preparation and imaging workflow to the needs of the users.