The Incubascope

We have developed a custom-made compact microscope that fits into a table-top incubator. It is cheap and simple to implement, user-friendly and yet provides high imaging performances. The system has a field of view of 5.5 × 8 mm2, a 3 μm resolution, a 10 frames per second acquisition rate, and is controlled with a Python-based graphical interface. We have extensive use of the Incubascope to monitor the growth of encapsulated spheroids or organoids.

We new aim to add optical sectioning capabilities to our apparatus to image in depth 3D multi-cellular aggregates.
To do so, we are working on OCT and light field microscopy version of the Incubascope.

• Badon, A., Andrique, L., Mombereau, A., Rivet, L., Boyreau, A., Nassoy, P. and Recher, G. (2021) ‘The Incubascope: a simple, compact and large field of view microscope for long-term imaging inside an incubator‘, Royal Society Open Science 9 (2), 211444
• A Jana, N Mekhileri, A Boyreau, A Bazin, N Pujol, K Alessandri, G Recher, … (2025). Incubascope: long-term quantitative imaging of multi-cellular assemblies inside an incubator. PloS one 20 (1), e0309035
• Github link