VoluScan™ Gen.3 - High-throughput Calcium Imaging for Organoids

Multi-Color Imaging & Simultaneous Optogenetics

VoluScan™ can accommodate up to four interchangeable filter sets, supporting single-color and two-color fluorescence imaging for different experimental applications. Available configurations support commonly used green and red fluorescent indicators and biosensors, including GCaMP, dLight, RCaMP, and jRGECO, depending on the selected excitation and emission filter configuration.

VoluScan™ G3 can also perform optogenetic stimulation simultaneously with calcium imaging, allowing researchers to manipulate neural activity while directly recording the functional response. Dedicated optical filters are used to minimize stimulation-light crosstalk with the fluorescence imaging channels.

Optogenetic illumination can cover the full 3.2 mm × 5 mm field of view at high intensity. Alternatively, an adjustable iris can be used to manually control both the illumination diameter and position, enabling targeted stimulation of selected regions within an organoid or assembloid.

This targeted mode is particularly useful for assembloid connectivity experiments, where one region can be stimulated while activity is monitored in neighboring or synaptically connected areas. Importantly, simultaneous optogenetic stimulation does not reduce the calcium-imaging sampling rate.

High-Speed Voltage Imaging

VoluScan™ can also be configured for voltage imaging, where substantially faster acquisition rates are required to resolve rapid changes in membrane potential. This configuration uses an sCMOS camera together with a high-NA objective to maximize sensitivity and photon collection.

Compared with calcium imaging, voltage imaging is typically performed in single-plane mode and over a more restricted field of view in order to achieve much higher sampling rates.

Even with this reduced imaging area, VoluScan™ can maintain a larger field of view than many commercial microscopes operating at comparable high-speed sampling rates, enabling fast functional imaging across relatively large neural populations.

High-Throughput & High-Content Functional Imaging

VoluScan™ is designed to collect large amounts of functional information from complex 3D neural models. Instead of monitoring only a small field of view, the system can measure activity from hundreds to thousands of cells across large portions of an intact organoid or assembloid.

Researchers can quantify neuronal activity, network synchrony, oscillations, functional connectivity, stimulus responses, and pharmacological responses. When genetically encoded indicators are expressed in specific cell populations, these measurements can also be performed with cell-type specificity.

The optional motorized 3D stage enables automated acquisition across multiple wells, dishes, organoids, assembloids, or predefined sample regions. Once regions of interest are defined, VoluScan™ can sequentially acquire data with minimal intervention, including during extended or overnight experiments. For example, a 96-well plate with 2–3 samples per well enables 192–288 samples per plate, with each sample imaged for 2 minutes at 4 planes and 20 Hz. With only a few seconds of stage movement between samples, VoluScan G3 enables rapid, high-throughput volumetric calcium imaging with minimal mechanical overhead.

This combination of high-content functional measurements and automated high-throughput acquisition makes VoluScan™ well suited for longitudinal studies, functional phenotyping, disease modeling, drug-response experiments, and preclinical screening workflows.

Disease Modeling, Drug Discovery & Functional Screening

VoluScan™ is well suited for studying neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders using patient-derived organoids and assembloids.

Live calcium imaging can reveal disease-associated changes in network activity, synchrony, oscillatory behavior, functional connectivity, and pharmacological responses. Combined with automated multi-sample acquisition, VoluScan™ provides a scalable approach for functional phenotyping and evaluating potential treatments in complex 3D neural models.

Data Acquisition & Analysis

VoluScan™ includes Doric Neuroscience Studio for data acquisition and experiment control.

An optional danse™ data analysis software license provides tools for processing and analyzing calcium-imaging experiments, including Suite2p-based cell detection, activity heatmaps, optogenetic response analysis, correlation analysis, and additional neural activity analyses.