The Fast and Non-Spurious: High-content screening without artefact in barrier tissues on a chip

The PhD project is aimed at improving data acquisition speed and quality in multimodal, label-free microscopy in high-throughput and high-content screening. Current methods are vulnerable to focus drift, which requires extra scanning time to correct and thus slows assays down. The meniscus formed at the culture well wall distorts and misaligns transmitted-light imaging, leading to difficulties in image analysis and segmentation.

Quantitative, reproducible data must be generated that can be relied upon to consistently deliver endpoints that can be analysed and presented in a preclinical research program.

The project will draw on and combine a set of simple technologies developed within the Webb lab to monitor and correct for defocus, meniscus artefact, and which provide multimodal, label-free quantitative phase imaging for endpoint interpretation.

In partnership with UK SME Cairn Research Ltd, using a condenser-free illumination paradigm, the student will elaborate, optimise, validate, and combine these technologies into a monolithic illumination unit capable of bright field, dark field, quantitative phase imaging on any microscope, at any magnification.