This is a new type of microscope,
which is the next generation of Microscopy.
It allows 3D imaging
of fixed or living tissue samples.
You have to be very fast
to monitor developing animals.
We generate a light plane with a laser,
and that light plane boosts fluorescence.
When we move that light plane,
we get a 3D image of our sample.
With this technology we can take a zebrafish images
while it develops and we can see its heart beating.
Its heart beats twice per second.
This fast technology allows taking many heart images,
so that we can reconstruct in 3D
how this heart beats.
It can be applied in cardiovascular disease studies
to understand a little better how a heart works.
One of the fundamental points in Microscopy
is that we can give different colours to cells
or molecular processes as we need them.
It is always useful having as many colours as possible.
In this case, we have four but we can have up to six,
which allows monitoring
up to six cell types within the same sample.
This device could be of interest to research centres
researching the development of different animal species
or to any other molecular biology study
focused on understanding molecular processes at the macroscopic level.
For instance, what happens in an organ.
If you label some cells with fluorescent proteins,
some specific monitoring for each organ
can be carried out at a cell level.
We aim to provide a user-friendly device.
With an intuitive software.
The user can see the sample,
he can choose where and how far he wants to scan,
he also picks the excitation and emission colours
to see the fluorescent proteins
and once those settings are fixed he runs the software
and creates a 3D image
with those colours.
We have been working within the live image field for many years
and particularly 3D imaging using light
at the bioengineering department at the UC3M.
Through the Science Park collaboration
we could set up this company
and two years ago we started focusing on this patent
that allows us marketing the device.