Clone Select Imager

Successful cell culture
For successful mammalian cell culture, monitoring the growth of cells in microplates is a vital process. With conventional techniques this is a time consuming and laborious procedure that can be subject to significant inconsistencies.

Now, the CloneSelectImager revolutionizes cell line management, measuring confluence and cell growth objectively and consistently, and performing rapid, detailed analysis of cells in a range of microplate and static culture formats.

A benchtop system, CloneSelect Imager is dedicated to the measurement of confluence and cell growth. It utilizes proprietary imaging techniques to enable the non-invasive confluence determination of both adherent cells in microplate formats and suspended cells in static culture.

Results review
CloneSelect Imager allows for further interrogation of confluence results for cell number estimation. Furthermore, the tracking of successive well images together with the instrument's 'loci of growth' function facilitates the detection of monoclonality.

From incubator to database in less than five minutes
CloneSelect Imager images adherent cell lines, such as CHO and HEK, in a range of microplates and also some monolayer suspension cells . This system is easy to use, and delivers objective and consistent confluence analysis in less than one minute for a fast representative scan, or five minutes for a fully imaged protocol.

As straightforward as 1 - 2 - 3: 1.  Load plate and select wells A plate is removed from the incubator and loaded directly into the system. The system is designed for easy integration with robotic plate handling systems.  A clear user interface makes it simple for an operator to select wells for imaging or to import data.
2. Image           CloneSelect Imager features three image modes: Fast scan, Full image and E-scope. Fast scan processes a representative 14mm2 central region of selected wells. Fast scan conducts the analysis of a whole microplate in less than two minutes. Full image captures images of the entire well. For 96-well plates, a single well is divided into four equal images. To fully image an entire microplate in approximately two minutes. E-Scope is a high-resolution mode that allows visual inspection of specific well regions. The high quality images provided by E-scope can be used to visually determine cell health or cell type.
3. Analyze Following scanning, CloneSelect Imager automatically analyses images to determine the area covered by cells in each well. Results can be viewed and reported in a number of formats, including: percentage confluence, cell number and loci of growth. Simply clicking on a well on-screen, accesses the relevant images. All results are stored and can be reviewed at any time for growth rate assessment.

 The benefits of CloneSelect Imager

• Simple, non-invasive white light imaging system with no cell loss or destruction
• Fast results - a 96-well plate can be read in less than two minutes
• Rapid imaging minimizes out-of-incubator time, so reducing pH- and temperature-change effects
• Consistent confluence percentage determination, eliminating human subjectivity
• Highly visual software in terms of data presentation. Simple graphic presentation of confluence data
• Data analysis functions generate cell growth curves, allow cell number estimation and provide an indication of monoclonality
• Growth curves enable matching of clones e.g. to create mixed polyclonal cultures
• Compatibility with adherent cells and suspension cells in static culture
• Compatibility with 96-, 24-, 6- and single well plates
• Built in barcode reader for data tracking of clones from source plate to all subsequent daughter wells
• Automation ready - the plate carrier is accessible for robot arms and automation software interfaces for ease of integration
• Sterility is assured - plates remain lidded during the whole imaging process
• Zoom function for high resolution imaging
• Comprehensive data export function

Applications

Confluence Determination
CloneSelect Imager delivers simple, rapid and fully automatic quantitative confluence analysis. There are two approaches: either the entire well or a representative region can be scanned. A full scan takes five minutes per 96-well plate, whereas Fast Scan, which scans a representative 14mm2, takes one minute.

Following imaging, the CloneSelect Imager calculates confluence for each well and displays the data in pie chart format. Fill colour changes as the confluence increases, making comparison an easy task.

The right hand side panel of the results screen shows distribution of confluence across a plate and an Excel or XML exportable table containing numerical confluence values for each well.

Cell number estimation
CloneSelect Imager estimates cell number for each well. This powerful application can be used with many different cell types over a diverse age range. Calibration curves are derived using either absolute or relative strategies:

• Absolute method: Wells are seeded with a known number of cells which are grown for a defined period and imaged with CloneSelect Imager. The cells are counted using an alternative cell counting technique. This data is added to the image file to create a calibration curve.
• Relative method: A dilution series of cells is prepared within a plate that is then grown for a defined period and imaged. Cell number is correlated to confluence area.

Clonality detection
Deciding whether a single cell is present within a single well is an essential requirement for both FACS and limiting dilutions. The 'loci of growth' function of the CloneSelect Imager enables rapid and traceable determination of both clonality and cell viability. The process relies on sample tracking.

Immediately after plating out, images are taken of each plate and stored in the database. At subsequent time points, plates are removed from the incubator and re-imaged.

Once in the result screen, clicking on the 'loci of growth' tab displays a new plate map where each of the wells has its number of growth (colony clumps) displayed. The software applies a filter to present only wells with a colony clump value of one.

The review button function allows the tracking back of images for any specific region.

Growth rate data
Time course data for a specific plate is readily accessible via the 'growth rate data' tab. Once a plate has been imaged, clicking on the tab initiates a search for all related results for that plate.

Selecting an individual data point displays the image and the confluence data for that well. The data can also be exported to provide the basis for decisions such as when to passage or re-plate cells.

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