WG 14 – Objectives
A stable environment is crucial to operate state of the art microscopes. Commercial instruments are designed to operate under specific room environment parameters, including temperature, humidity, vibration, dust, and electrical/electromagnetic or acoustical noise.
It is important to adhere to these specifications to ensure accurate and reproducible results. Currently, it is unclear for the light microscopy community how to accurately and routinely measure these parameters and relate own measurements with the required specifications.
WG14 aims to establish measurement protocols for light microscopy room requirements. Our initial goal will be to develop protocols for measuring temperature at key locations in the room and at the microscope.
WG 14 – Co-Chairs
WG 14 - Latest News
Upcoming meeting: 18th June 2025, 5:00 pm
Last meeting: 16th April 2025, 5:00 pm
12th meeting, 21st of May 2025
Meeting summary
Agenda:
- Organisational matters and News
- Working on our Protocol Draft
- Next steps
At the beginning of the meeting we decided to have a summer break and skip the July meeting. This was followed by a short report from the last steering committee meeting.
The main part of the meeting we continued to work on our protocol draft based on the three aims we decided upon during our April meeting. We noticed that we had to add a lot of notes to each steps pointing out the differences for the different aims. To make the workflow more stringent in the end, we discussed to separate the draft into three protocols, one for each aim, in the end. In addition, we worked on the abstract text and the guidelines.
11th meeting, 16th of April 2025
Meeting date
16/04/2025 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
Agenda:
- Organisational matters and News
- Report from QAUREP-LiMi Annual Meeting
- Working on Protocol Draft, including presentation and discussion of measured data
- Next steps
After organizational matters and a report from the SC meeting, we have been working on our protocol draft. In particular, we discussed and finalized the three aims of WG14: Aim 1 – Sanity Check – Simple check of room temperature stability for everyday use. Aim 2 – Equipment requirement – Check for compliance with the room temperature requirement parameters given by the system provider. Aim 3 – Room behaviour determination – To describe the detailed temperature behaviour of the room for future use as a microscopy room. Finally, Rainer presented the data on the characterization of the W&T sensors, which were an option for affordable temperature sensors and logging device.
10th meeting, 19th of February 2025
Meeting date
19/02/2025 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
At the beginning of the meeting we decided to skip our March meeting (due to TIM2025). This decision process was followed by a short report from the February steering committee meeting.
The main work item on our WG14 meeting agenda was to continue on our protocol draft. In particular, we identified three main aims for which microscopy room temperature measurements would be necessary: Aim1 – User complaint, Aim2 – Equipment requirement, and Aim3 – Room behaviour determination. Each of these aims require slightly different measurement scenarios. Therefore, we discussed whether it would be useful to develop three separate protocols, one for each aim. We agreed to keep developing one protocol with pointing out the differences for each respective aim for each protocol step.
9th meeting, 15th of January 2025
Meeting date
15/01/2025 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
After organizational matters, we have been working on our protocol draft. In particular, we discussed how to find optimal positions of the sensors to measure room temperature fluctuations.
The discussion clearly demonstrated that an accurate protocol would be rather time (and budget) demanding.
Thus, we are currently trying to develop a protocol aimed for usage by imaging laboratories and light microscope facilities.
8th meeting, 18th of December 2024
Meeting date
18/12/2024 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
After organizational matters, reports from SC meeting, and a brief update on the ELMI 2025 community rooms, we continued to work on our protocol draft. (You can find the draft here on our WG14 protocols.io workspace).
In particular, we discussed and finalized the equation to analyze temperature recordings in our protocol (can be found in the third note of step 5). We also worked on the section describing the number of temperature sensors for monitoring the room temperature (step 6). The main discussion point in step 6 was which minimum number of sensor we can recommend that will still deliver reliable results. Rainer offered to do some measurements which will hep us to clarify this. In the next meeting on January 15th 2025, we will continue working on step 6.
We also discussed briefly that there are ISO standards relevant for our protocol but we do not have access to them yet.
7th meeting, 16th of October 2024
Meeting date
16/10/2024 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
After welcoming a new member to our working group, we shared information from the steering committee meeting in October, and agreed to skip our WG14 meeting in November.
These organisational discussions were follow by a short presentation of the protocol collection being prepared for publishing by WG2. Please have a look and comment.
This discussion led to our main topic for the meeting, our continued work on our first protocol draft for “Monitoring room temperature”. We finished going through our protocol draft and the respective comments.
In particular, we talked about the importance of providing recommendation for temperature sensors with the protocol. An excel-sheet to collect the information about temperature sensors is set up in our WG14 Tools folder. We agreed to use the time until the December meeting to work on an equation for the Analysis part in our protocol as well as draft texts for our Appendix. We will discuss these additions to the protocol in the December meeting.
6th meeting, 21st of August 2024
Meeting date
21/08/2024 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
After the short organisational matters and news part, we discussed temperature-related focus shifts. During the discussion we focussed on temperature-related changes in refractive indexes and looked at the effect on different immersion media. We talked about causes of these temperature changes and how to avoid them. These considerations need to be taken into account especially for room characterisation measurements. This discussion led to our main topic for the meeting, our continued work on our first protocol draft for “Monitoring room temperature”. We discussed about frequency of the measurements, need for equipment calibration, and needed to provide recommendation for temperature sensors. We will continue working on our protocol in the next meeting.
5th meeting, 17th of July 2024
Meeting date
17/07/2024 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
After deciding to skip our meeting in September and briefly sharing news from the last QUAREP-LiMi steering committee meeting, we welcomed our new member Glen Doherty.
Following solving some access issues and going over the general handling of the protocols workspace, we started working on our “Measuring room temperature” protocol draft. First, we decided to keep the abstract text as it currently is and get back to it once the protocol itself is finished. We then went on to discuss the first two steps in the protocol draft. We talked about how many sensors are needed and agreed on at least three. Some hints and tipps for an optimal number are needed to be added in our protocol. Important as well is the positioning of the temperature sensors. Several placement problems and considerations were discussed. Also, importance of calibration of the temperature sensors against each other was discussed.
We emphasised the need to decide and state clearly the purpose of a respective temperature measurement protocol. Potentially, different aspects will lead to different protocols. We talked about several aspects of the two main aims, room temperature monitoring and room temperature optimisation, respectively. Optimisation aims can be placement of a microscope within a room or adjustment of air conditioning of the room. Monitoring is important for being able to judge whether a room can meet the temperature requirements of a company at all, as well as how stable the room temperature is over time. One has to consider to measure at different outside conditions (summer and winter, night and day). In addition, we stressed to focus on temperature measurement but to also mention humidity as an important and temperature-dependent environmental factor. By publishing our protocol including problematic examples, we aim to increase awareness of importance of temperature stability and thus temperature monitoring.
We will continue working on the protocol in the next meeting. Until then, the co-chairs will work on integrating the discussion points from this meeting into our protocol draft.
4th meeting, 19th of June 2024
Meeting date
19/06/2024 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
At our fourth meeting, an experiment showing the importance of maintaining room temperature very precisely was discussed and a brief introduction to the publication by Kukat C. et al. (DOI: 10.1002/cyto.a.24795) was given. In the experiment, time-lapse recordings of GATTA Quant beads on a slide and temperature trends on the slide were measured with a slow and a fast reacting thermal sensor from Thorlabs (by Roland Nitschke). When he very gently blew warm air onto the slide, he was able to record an increase in temperature along with a shift in focus. As these are preliminary results, further testing and discussion is required to understand the implications of the results.
Hans Fried presented the results of Kukat et al. The room temperature measurement strategy used in this publication will serve as a starting point for the development of a room temperature measurement protocol.