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: 15th July 2026, 5:00 pm
Last meeting: 20th May 2026, 5:00 pm
19th meeting, 15th of April 2026
Meeting date
15/04/2026 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
Agenda:
- Organisational matters and News
- Discuss meaning of given temparature variations for light microscopy
- Working on our Protocol Draft
- Next steps
Summary:
After organizational matters and a report from the SC meeting, we agreed on the meaning of “mean room temperature” and the +/- values. The given temperature is the set temperature, the AC should reach. Thus, when your measured mean temperature is too far off from the set temperature, something is also wrong. The +/- values are measured around the reached mean value. Finally, we have been working on our protocol draft step 4 and ff.
18th meeting, 18th of February 2026
Meeting date
18/02/2026 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
Agenda:
- Organisational matters and News
- Discuss meaning of given temparature variations for light microscopy
- Working on our Protocol Draft
- Next steps
17th meeting, 21st of January 2026
Meeting date
21/01/2026 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
Agenda:
- Organisational matters and News
- Working on our Protocol Draft
- Next steps
We started the meeting with a short report from the January steering committee meeting. As a result, we agreed to not plan a workshop at ELMI 2026, but rather aim for doing it for ELMI 2027.
We continued the meeting with our main agenda point, working on our protocol draft. In particular, we worked on finishing the comment for Aim2 in step4 of the protocol.
During the discussion, we focused on temperature analysis requirements and specific temperature variation limits for different room conditions.
In addition, we discussed sensor placement and temperature measurement requirements for microscope rooms, with particular attention to temperature gradients and fluctuations that could impact imaging quality.
14th meeting, 20th of August 2025
Meeting date
20/08/2025 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
Agenda:
- Organisational matters and News
- Working on our Protocol Draft
- Next steps
At the beginning of our meeting we confirmed to skip our September meeting and reconvene in October. This was followed by a report from the last steering committee meeting. The SC addressed protocol implementation and funding opportunities, including discussions about a potential grant. We then continued to work on our protocol draft. In particular, we focused on temperature monitoring requirements for different microscope systems, including sensor placement and measurement methods. Mainly, we worked on step 4. We discussed which and how many sliding windows for temperature measurement and evaluation is needed with respect to our three aims, and how many sensors are needed for the three different aims.
Homework has been distributed to prepare for the next meeting, which will take place on October 15th 2025.
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.