SLICE is the first light sheet microscope designed around the way modern neuroscience and biology labs actually work, not around specialized optics rooms and core facilities. Born in the Tomer Lab at Columbia University and built on Projected Light Sheet Microscopy (Chen et al., 2024), SLICE won the 2025 Microscopy Today Innovation Award and is now installed at more than 30 leading research institutions across three continents.
It images whole mouse brains, cleared organs, and organoids at sub-micron resolution. It handles every major clearing technique, including iDISCO, CLARITY, CUBIC, and BINAREE, without a single hardware change. It fits on a lab bench, needs no vibration isolation table, and is quiet enough to live in the room where your samples are prepared. And BrightSLICE — the complete acquisition, processing, and visualization software — comes with every system. No separate license. No third-party stack to assemble.
Complete systems from $99K. You’ll pay a fraction of what legacy light sheet systems cost. You’ll get more than you paid for.
Why Choose SLICE?
Light sheet microscopy has long been the right tool for 3D biology and, for most labs that needed it, an out-of-reach one. The leading instruments are extraordinary, and they are also half a million dollars, mounted on optical tables in dedicated optics rooms or shared core facilities, and typically optimized for one clearing protocol at a time. If you wanted to image a cleared whole mouse brain, you either had a core facility with a waiting list or you didn't have the experiment.
SLICE was built to change that equation, not by cutting corners on what a light sheet microscope is supposed to do, but by rethinking how one should be built.
At its heart is Projected Light Sheet Microscopy, a new optical architecture developed in the Tomer Lab at Columbia University and published in Nature Biomedical Engineering (Chen et al., 2024). Instead of generating a static light sheet with a cylindrical lens, SLICE dynamically projects and modulates the sheet. Combined with additional optical innovations, this architecture unlocks three things at once: multi-resolution imaging from a single instrument, automatic compensation for refractive index differences between clearing media, and a far simpler, more compact optical path. The result is a light sheet microscope that performs at the level of systems costing five to seven times more. Nature Reviews Bioengineering called out the approach as a significant advance for the field
(Horejs, 2024).
That architecture is what makes everything else on this page possible. It is why you can move from one clearing technique to another — iDISCO, CLARITY, CUBIC, SHANEL, BINAREE, and whatever comes next — without swapping a single piece of hardware. It is why SLICE fits on a benchtop instead of filling a room. It is why a student or lab tech can sit down and acquire a whole-brain dataset without an optics background. And it is why SLICE costs what it costs: not because anything was sacrificed, but because a better design needs fewer expensive workarounds.
SLICE is engineered to go where your science actually happens: small lab spaces, higher-biosafety rooms, the bench next to the sample prep hood. Not the building across campus.
| Lateral Resolution | ~0.75μm (with 10x objective) |
| Light-Sheet Thickness | 5μm - 8μm at light sheet waist |
| Light-Sheet Field of View (FOV) | 1.2mm x 0.75mm (with 10x objective) |
| Maximum Sample Size | 20 mm x 20 mm x 18 mm |
| Imaging Speed | Up to 17 frames per second (Sample/Settings Dependent) |
| 3 Excitation Lasers | Blue (455nm), Green (520nm), Red (640nm) |
| Detection Objectives | Long working distance, Plan Apochromat |
| Illumination | Dual opposing light sheets for uniform illumination |
| Photobleaching | Minimal. pLSM architecture supports extended imaging sessions |
| Refractive Index Compensation | Automatic, real-time, software-driven. No hardware changes required when switching clearing media |
| Vibration Isolation Table | Not required |
| Sample Mounting | Exchangeable, magnetically held cuvettes in multiple sizes |
| System Dimensions | L 457 mm x W 368 mm x H 304 mm |
| Clearing Methods Supported | iDISCO, CLARITY, SHANEL, CUBIC, BINAREE and other optical clearing techniques |
| Labeling Methods Supported | Endogenous fluorescent protein expression via transgenic and viral method (e.g., GFP, tdTomato, mKate2, and many more), immunofluorescence with antibody-conjugated fluorophores (e.g., Alexa 488, 555, 647, Cy3, and Cy5), nucleic acid stains (e.g., SYTOX green and blue), perfusion labeling with lectin-conjugated fluorophores, click chemistry with azide-fluorophore pairs, and fluorophore amplification methods as HCR/FISH. |
BrightSLICE is a powerful, all-in-one software solution designed specifically for light-sheet microscopy. From acquisition to analysis, handle teravoxel-scale imaging with unprecedented ease and precision.
Core Capabilities
See a full list of new features and enhancements of BrightSLICE here.
Download SLICE brochure here.
Download our white paper: Practical Guidelines for Working with Large-Scale Light Sheet Data
Download our white paper: A Practical Guide to Selecting Compression Levels for 3D Light Sheet Fluorescent Microscopy Data
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 Human brain, stained with Podocalyxin/CD31 and Acta2 vasculature markers. Tissue cleared with iDISCO and imaged with 16x objective. Image courtesy of the Tomer Lab. |
 Human brain, stained with Podocalyxin/CD31 and Acta2 vasculature markers. Tissue cleared with iDISCO and imaged with 16x objective. Image courtesy of the Tomer Lab. |
 Intact mouse brain cleared with SHANEL and immunolabeled with Alexa Fluor 488 for ACTA2 and Alexa Fluor 647 for collagen. Image acquired using a 10×/0.28 NA detection objective at the Tomer Lab. The coloring in the maximum intensity projection corresponds to depth. Sample preparation and imaging by Wesley Yu-Young Tsai and Pauline Affatato, Columbia University. |
 Axons in the Inferior Colliculus of mouse brain cleared with Binaree (Binaree, Inc., Daegu, Republic of Korea), and labeled using retrograde rAAV tracing under the CAG promoter with TdTomato fluorophore. Image acquired with 10x/0.28 NA objective. |
 High-resolution imaging of the mouse brain vasculature in an iDISCO cleared sample. Courtesy Dr. Raju Tomer, Columbia University. |
 Mouse Vessels |
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 Same field of view acquired on the SLICE light sheet microscope at 5x and 10x magnification to compare image resolution. |
 Comparison of 5x and 10x detection fields of view (FOVs). The same mouse brain region was imaged at 5x/0.14 NA, with the 10x/0.28 NA FOV overlaid. |
 Astyanax mexicanus brain cleared using iDISCO+ and stained with TO-PRO to label cell nuclei. Sample courtesy of the Kowalko lab, Lehigh University. |
 Transgenic adult mouse brain cleared with Binaree tissue clearing, expressing EYFP in neurons regulated by the Thy-1 gene promoter. |
 Transgenic adult mouse brain cleared with Binaree tissue clearing, expressing EYFP in neurons regulated by the Thy-1 gene promoter. |
 Mouse brain labeled with tdTomato. Cleared with IDISCO. |
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 Ovary of a 3 month old mouse embryo labeled with IHC for Cyp17a1 theca cells (magenta), and GFP (cyan). Image was acquired with a 10x magnification objective. |
 Ventral dopaminergic regions of a 9 month old rat brain cleared using iDISCO and IHC labeled for Tyrosine Hydroxylase. Sample provided by the Rapp Lab (NIA) |
 Transgenic adult mouse brain cleared with Binaree tissue clearing, expressing EYFP in neurons regulated by the Thy-1 gene promoter. |
 Mouse brain labeled with tdTomato. Cleared with IDISCO. |
 A zoomed-in view of the brain revealing the dorsal hippocampus with sparsely labeled pyramidal neurons, fully resolved dendritic arbors extending through the hippocampal layers, penetrating vasculature, and scattered cell bodies in the surrounding cortex. The depth-encoded color palette highlights the three-dimensional organization of single-neuron morphology within the intact tissue architecture. |
 Mouse brain labeled with tdTomato. Cleared with IDISCO. A zoomed-in region of the brain highlights the striatum, where dense internal capsule fiber bundles course through the caudate-putamen alongside individually resolved tdTomato-labeled medium spiny neurons and blood vessels. At this scale, the interplay between myelinated fiber tract architecture and single-cell detail becomes strikingly apparent. |
 Ventral dopaminergic regions of a 9 month old rat brain cleared using iDISCO and IHC labeled for Tyrosine Hydroxylase. |
 The images were generated from a day 14.5 embryo that was cleared (iDISCO) and stained with an antibody to serotonin, one of the earliest molecules involved in neurodevelopment. Serotonin has a lifelong role in both the periphery and central nervous system, and is frequently targeted in mental illness. Serotonin (purple) is visualized in the two far right images of a whole embryo, and in close-up sections in the bottom row. Scalebars for the bottom row are 500 micrometers, the scalebar next to the embryo is 1 mm. The autofluorescence (green) allows us to identify the organs and vasculature of the developing embryo; many of the organs have an adult-like appearance. However, the embryo will still undergo significant development and will mature through both cellular growth and through environmental experience, which is a beautiful representation of how science has evolved enough to allow us to see these structures at microscopic levels in at delicate stages of life. |
 Sample is adolescent mouse labeled with GFP, and an antibody to a specific class of neuron receptor in olfactory epithelium. Cleared with iDISCO+. |
A novel workflow for whole-brain analysis in rodents using light sheet microscopy, brain atlases, and artificial intelligence
BrightSLICE is the software that runs SLICE and handles everything the microscope produces. It controls the instrument during acquisition, stitches hundreds of image tiles into a seamless whole, corrects illumination and refractive index variation in real time, lets you inspect multi-terabyte datasets interactively on a GPU, compresses data without loss of analytical integrity, and exports to every format downstream analysis tools expect. BrightSLICE comes with every SLICE system. There is no second license, no third-party stack to assemble, and no separate viewer to install.
What BrightSLICE Does
Acquisition: Real-time microscope control, multi-channel imaging with automated synchronization, automatic refractive index compensation, automated metadata logging, savable imaging protocols
Processing: Automated flatfield correction, seamless stitching of hundreds of tiles, GPU-accelerated deconvolution, noise reduction, background correction, wavelet compression up to 95%
Visualization: Interactive viewing of multi-terabyte datasets, GPU-accelerated 3D rendering, maximum intensity and partial projections, sub-volume exploration, publication-quality movie generation
Export and integration: OME-TIFF, JPX, and multi-resolution output. Native pipelines into NeuroInfo, Neurolucida 360, and Stereo Investigator. Direct compatibility with Fiji, ImageJ, Python, MATLAB, and Napari
One Application, Not an Assembled Pipeline
Most light sheet microscopes leave the software problem to the customer. You get an acquisition program from the vendor, you buy a visualization license from a second company, you install a third tool for stitching and flatfield correction, you open your data in Fiji or Imaris for inspection, and you hope the file formats line up at every step. A significant fraction of the total cost of running a conventional light sheet system is the time and expertise it takes to keep that pipeline working.
BrightSLICE replaces all of it. Acquisition, stitching, processing, visualization, compression, movie generation, and export happen in one application, with one set of imaging parameters carried forward into every step. A graduate student running SLICE on Monday morning does not need to know which tool produced which file. They run one program, and their data is ready for analysis when they finish acquiring it.
Teravoxel Datasets, Without a Supercomputer
Light sheet microscopy generates image data at a scale most research software was never designed to handle. A single cleared mouse brain at sub-cellular resolution produces hundreds of gigabytes; a typical experiment fills terabytes. Opening a dataset of that size in a conventional viewer is often impossible without first downsampling, which defeats the point of acquiring the data at full resolution.
BrightSLICE is built around this problem from the ground up. The viewing engine is GPU-accelerated and parallelized across available cores, with streaming data access so that the application loads only what you are currently looking at. You can open a multi-terabyte dataset, scroll through it interactively, make sub-volume selections, render maximum intensity projections in real time, and generate publication-quality movies — all on a single workstation. No cluster, no external rendering farm.
Your Data, in the Tools You Already Use
BrightSLICE is designed to live in a real research workflow, not to replace one. Output files are saved in OME-TIFF, the open standard for bioimaging, along with JPX and multi-resolution formats optimized for specific downstream uses. Every imaging parameter is recorded in the metadata, so experiments are reproducible and reviewable months or years after acquisition.
For labs using the MBF Bioscience analysis suite, BrightSLICE exports directly into NeuroInfo for brain atlas registration and AI-driven cell quantification, Neurolucida 360 for neuron and vessel reconstruction, and Stereo Investigator for unbiased stereology for deconvolution. For labs using open-source or third-party tools, BrightSLICE opens cleanly in Fiji, ImageJ, Python, MATLAB, Napari, and any other analysis environment that reads OME-TIFF. Switching between the two ecosystems is not a decision you have to make when you buy SLICE — it is a decision you can make experiment by experiment, or not at all.
See the full list of BrightSLICE features and recent release notes →
Built-in Wavelet Compression for Teravoxel Datasets
Light sheet microscopy’s hardest practical problem is image data size. A single cleared mouse brain acquired at cellular resolution easily generates hundreds of gigabytes, and a typical experiment produces terabytes. Most labs end up buying more storage, moving data off-site, or simply acquiring fewer experiments than they’d like.
BrightSLICE solves this with intelligent wavelet compression built directly into the acquisition pipeline. At the validated 15:1 to 20:1 compression ratios, a 500 GB dataset becomes a 25 GB dataset — with zero measurable impact on quantitative analysis. We verified this using perceptual quality metrics and automated downstream analysis across real user data. The details are in our white paper.
What this means in practice: storage infrastructure costs drop by more than 90%, data transfers between workstations and collaborators become fast enough to do casually, and experiments that would have been impossible on a reasonable storage budget become routine.
Seven questions to ask before buying a light sheet microscope. And how SLICE answers each one.
| SLICE | Conventional Light Sheet Systems | |
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| Starting price | From $99,000 | $350,000 – $750,000+ |
| Annual maintenance & software updates | $5,000, all-inclusive | $25,000 – $60,000+, often with software licensed separately |
| Footprint | Benchtop. Fits in a standard lab or sample prep room | Optical table installation. Typically requires a dedicated optics room |
| Vibration isolation table | Not required | Required |
| Switching clearing media (iDISCO, CLARITY, CUBIC, BINAREE, and others) | Software-driven. No hardware changes | Often requires manual realignment, or is restricted to proprietary clearing methods |
| Acquisition, processing, and visualization software | BrightSLICE included with every system | Frequently licensed separately or assembled from third-party tools |
| Typical operator | Student, lab tech, or postdoc | Dedicated instrument specialist |
SLICE puts a research-grade light sheet microscope in your own lab, on your own timeline. No core facility queue, no dedicated optics room, no six-figure infrastructure investment before the instrument even arrives. Your team can be acquiring whole-brain datasets within days of delivery, and the $5,000 annual support fee covers hardware, software updates, and technical support with no surprises. For grant-funded labs, SLICE is priced to fit within a single R01 equipment budget and designed to keep producing data for the life of the award.
SLICE and BrightSLICE are designed so that the person running the experiment doesn't need to be an optics specialist or computer programmer. The software handles microscope control, stitching, processing, visualization, and export in a single application. Switching clearing methods is a software adjustment, not a reconfiguration. The learning curve is short enough that you spend your time on science, not on instrument operation, and the data you produce is publication-ready from the start.
A single legacy light sheet microscope costs $350,000 to $750,000, serves one user at a time, and creates a bottleneck every lab in the building has to schedule around. For the same budget, a core facility can deploy multiple SLICE systems running in parallel, eliminate the queue, and give more researchers direct access to light sheet imaging. SLICE's compact benchtop footprint means it doesn't need a dedicated optics room, and BrightSLICE's integrated software means the facility doesn't have to maintain a separate stack of third-party licenses. The $5,000 all-inclusive annual support per system keeps operating costs predictable.
SLICE brings light sheet microscopy to neuroscience, 3D cancer models, organoid screening, and cleared-tissue pathology without the infrastructure cost of traditional systems. Image drug penetration, tumor microenvironment organization, and cellular response within intact 3D structures at sub-cellular resolution. The benchtop form factor and BSL-compatible design mean SLICE can live in the lab where the work is done, and BrightSLICE's wavelet compression keeps terabyte-scale screening datasets manageable without compromising quantitative integrity. SLICE is a complete imaging solution, not just a microscope: BrightSLICE handles acquisition through visualization, and native pipelines into NeuroInfo, Neurolucida 360, and Stereo Investigator, connect directly to atlas registration, cell quantification, and morphological reconstruction without manual data conversion or third-party middleware.
Neuroscience is where SLICE was born and where it does its most distinctive work. The SLICE architecture was developed specifically to image large, intact neural tissue at the resolution and scale that connectomics, circuit tracing, and whole-brain mapping demand.
SLICE images entire cleared mouse brains and spinal cords in 3D at sub-cellular resolution, with the field of view and penetration depth to map neural circuits, trace axonal projections, and identify cellular populations across whole organs. Automatic refractive index compensation means you can use whichever clearing protocol your lab has standardized on — iDISCO, CLARITY, CUBIC, BINAREE — without reconfiguring the instrument.
Where SLICE becomes a complete neuroscience workflow, not just an imaging tool, is in its native pipelines to MBF Bioscience's analysis suite. BrightSLICE exports directly into NeuroInfo for brain atlas registration and AI-driven cell quantification, Neurolucida 360 for neuron and vessel reconstruction, Stereo Investigator for unbiased stereology, and NeuroDeblur for deconvolution. No file conversion, no third-party middleware. The path from cleared brain to quantified, atlas-registered data runs through a single ecosystem.
Researchers at Columbia, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, UCSD, Harvard, and dozens of other institutions are using SLICE for whole-brain imaging, dopaminergic network mapping, vascular reconstruction, c-Fos activity screening, and developmental neurobiology. The images throughout this page — from the Tomer Lab's human vasculature work to the FosTRAP whole-brain mapping to the Kowalko Lab's cavefish brains at Lehigh — were all acquired on SLICE.
Understanding the tumor microenvironment in three dimensions — spatial organization of tumor cells, immune infiltration, vasculature, drug penetration — requires imaging that goes beyond what 2D sections and confocal stacks can provide. SLICE brings light sheet microscopy to cancer research at a price point and form factor that makes it practical for individual labs, not just core facilities.
Image cleared tumor biopsies, patient-derived organoids, and tumor spheroids at sub-cellular resolution across their full 3D volume. Track drug distribution and cellular response within intact 3D cancer models. Quantify tumor volume changes, cellular morphology, protein expression, and phenotypic shifts in response to therapies. SLICE's minimal photobleaching supports extended time-lapse imaging of live tumor dynamics — migration, invasion, angiogenesis, immune cell infiltration — without compromising sample viability.
The benchtop form factor means SLICE can be installed in containment labs and biosafety environments where floor-standing light sheet systems cannot go. BrightSLICE's wavelet compression keeps terabyte-scale screening datasets manageable, and native pipelines into MBF Bioscience's analysis suite connect imaging directly to quantification without manual data conversion.
Developmental biology and tissue engineering share a common imaging challenge: visualizing how complex 3D structures form, differentiate, and organize over time, often in samples that are delicate, irregularly shaped, or difficult to clear uniformly. SLICE's combination of gentle illumination, broad clearing-method compatibility, and sub-cellular resolution makes it well suited to both fields.
For developmental biologists, SLICE images whole embryos, developing organs, and organoids at the resolution needed to track cell populations, map gene expression patterns, and follow morphogenetic processes across intact specimens. The images on this page include a day 14.5 mouse embryo cleared with iDISCO and stained for serotonin, showing organ-level architecture and neurodevelopmental detail in a single acquisition.
For tissue engineers, SLICE enables high-resolution 3D characterization of scaffolds, engineered constructs, and vascularization patterns. Image cell-biomaterial interactions, quantify vascular density and matrix deposition, and screen multiple scaffold designs or culture conditions efficiently using SLICE's rapid volumetric acquisition. BrightSLICE handles the full pipeline from acquisition through visualization, and exported data flows directly into MBF's analysis tools or into open-source environments via OME-TIFF.
From brain atlas registration to deconvolution, the SLICE analysis software suite brings together our most advanced tools: NeuroInfo, Neurolucida 360 and Stereo Investigator, into one streamlined workflow for your light sheet microscopy data.
The most advanced software for automatic 3D neuron and vessel reconstruction.
The complete stereology solution. The gold standard for unbiased cell counting.
Accurate brain atlas registration and AI-driven cell and biomarker quantification.
The SLICE Discovery Platform is an integrated imaging technology that streamlines how you capture, process, and analyze biological data. By combining one or more SLICE microscopes with scalable computing and storage infrastructure, it transforms light sheet microscopy into a high-throughput system with advanced imaging and analysis capabilities. The platform offers the flexibility to expand with additional microscopes, analysis computers, and storage, ensuring it scales seamlessly as your research grows.
Explore strategies to streamline handling, processing, and analysis of large light sheet datasets, allowing researchers to focus on discovery. Read our white paper.
Discover methods for selecting optimal compression levels in light sheet datasets, reducing storage demands while preserving image quality. Read our white paper.
Light-Sheet Microscope Design Puts Whole-Brain Imaging in Reach for Scientists
Featured cover article highlighting how the SLICE™Light Sheet Microscope is helping make high-performance whole-brain fluorescence imaging more accessible to researchers. Read more.
MICROSCOPY TODAY
SLICE: A Turnkey, Low-Cost Light-Sheet Fluorescence Microscope for Sub-Cellular Imaging of Cleared Tissues at Mesoscale Volumes
Article highlighting SLICE’s rapid volumetric imaging, sub-cellular resolution, and compatibility with widely used tissue-clearing protocols. Read more.
A low-cost, modular LSFM system generates high-resolution single-pixel light sheets and supports scalable, multi-color imaging of cleared tissues, organoids, and live biofilms, matching the performance of commercial platforms.
SLICE goes where your science is
For most of the history of light sheet microscopy, the instrument dictated the terms. You built a room for it, or you booked time on someone else’s. You scheduled your experiment around the instrument’s calendar, not your biology’s. You prepared samples in one building and carried them to another. You learned the specific clearing protocol the microscope was configured for, because reconfiguring it meant a service call. And when you wanted to try a new clearing method, or image a BSL-2 sample, or run a quick pilot before committing to a grant, the answer was usually not this week.
This is what it means for a microscope to be built for the way labs actually work.
Read the full story here
Academic-Industry Collaboration Advances Accessible, High-Resolution 3D Imaging Williston, VT – MBF Bioscience is honored to announce that Dr. Raju Tomer’s
A recent feature article in BioPhotonics magazine highlights how the SLICE Light Sheet Microscope combines projected light-sheet microscopy (pLSM), advanced optics
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE WILLISTON, VT – August 18, 2025 – MBF Bioscience today proudly announces that its revolutionary light sheet microscope,
The SLICE light microscope is used by the most prestigious laboratories across the globe.
The utility of MBF’s products is underscored by the number of references it receives in the world’s leading scientific publications. See examples below:
Gong, C., Affatato, P., Fay, M. et al.
Hybrid solid−liquid optics enable scalable, high-resolution light-sheet microscopy across diverse immersion media.View Publication
Horejs, CM.
Low-cost, high-performance light-sheet microscopyView Publication
Chen, Y., Chauhan, S., Gong, C. et al.
Low-cost and scalable projected light-sheet microscopy for the high-resolution imaging of cleared tissue and living samplesView Publication
SLICE is a benchtop light sheet microscope built on Projected Light Sheet Microscopy, a new optical architecture developed in the Tomer Lab at Columbia University and published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. It images whole mouse brains, cleared organs, and organoids at sub-cellular resolution, handles every major clearing technique in software without hardware changes, and comes with BrightSLICE, a complete acquisition-to-visualization software pipeline. Complete systems start at $99,000 with $5,000 annual all-inclusive support. It won the 2025 Microscopy Today Innovation Award and is installed at more than 30 leading research institutions.
Because the design is better, not cheaper. Conventional light sheet systems use complex, mechanically adjustable optical paths that require large optical tables, vibration isolation, dedicated rooms, and media-specific hardware configurations. SLICE's pLSM architecture handles multi-resolution imaging and refractive index compensation in software, which eliminates much of that mechanical complexity. The result is a simpler optical path, a smaller footprint, and a dramatically lower manufacturing cost — with no sacrifice in imaging performance. A better architecture needs fewer expensive workarounds. Over five years, the total cost of ownership difference is even larger than the sticker price suggests, because SLICE's $5,000 annual support covers hardware, software updates, and technical support, compared to $25,000–$60,000+ annually for conventional systems, often with acquisition and analysis software licensed separately.
No. SLICE is engineered to operate on any stable lab bench without a dedicated air table.
All major optical clearing techniques, including iDISCO, CLARITY, SHANEL, CUBIC, and BINAREE. Switching between them is handled in software through automatic refractive index compensation. No manual realignment, no proprietary reagents. See Sample Compatibility and Flexibility for full details.
Whole rodent brains, cleared organs, organoids, tumor spheroids, and other 3D biological specimens up to 20 × 20 × 18 mm. SLICE supports three excitation lasers (455 nm, 520 nm, 640 nm) and is compatible with commonly used fluorescent proteins and dyes including GFP, eYFP, tdTomato, Cy5, Alexa Fluor conjugates, and many others. See Sample Compatibility and Flexibility for full details.
Yes. Our Specimen Imaging Service lets you send us your prepared samples. We image them on a SLICE system and return the raw data files and processed movies for your evaluation. This is the most direct way to assess how SLICE performs on the samples that matter to your research. Request the Specimen Imaging Service →
Lateral resolution of ~0.75 μm (with 10x objective), light-sheet thickness of 5–8 μm at the waist, imaging speed up to 17 frames per second, and three excitation lasers at 455 nm, 520 nm, and 640 nm. Maximum sample size is 20 × 20 × 18 mm. The full specification table is in the Hardware Specifications tab.
BrightSLICE is the software that runs SLICE and handles everything the microscope produces: acquisition, stitching, flatfield correction, background correction, destriping, visualization of multi-terabyte datasets, wavelet compression, and export. It comes included with every SLICE system. There is no separate acquisition license, no third-party visualization tool to buy, and no analysis pipeline to assemble. BrightSLICE exports natively into MBF Bioscience's analysis suite (NeuroInfo, Neurolucida 360, Stereo Investigator, NeuroDeblur) and into standard open formats (OME-TIFF) compatible with Fiji, ImageJ, Python, MATLAB, and Napari.
Yes. SLICE and BrightSLICE are designed so that students, lab technicians, and postdocs can operate the instrument and produce publication-ready data without an optics background. Switching clearing methods is a software adjustment, not a reconfiguration. The interface handles microscope control, processing, and visualization in a single application, so the operator doesn't need to manage multiple tools or file format conversions.
SLICE uses exchangeable, magnetically held cuvettes in multiple sizes. They're designed for quick mounting of complexly shaped organs and tissues, keeping samples immobilized and correctly positioned in the light sheet. Load a sample and begin imaging in minutes.
The $5,000 annual support fee covers hardware maintenance, all BrightSLICE software updates, and direct technical support from MBF Bioscience's team, which includes Ph.D. neuroscientists and microscopy specialists. We provide remote and, where feasible, on-site training to get your team productive quickly. MBF Bioscience has supported neuroscience labs since 1988.
Yes, through direct sales and international distribution partners. Contact us to find availability in your region.
We offer virtual demonstrations, our Specimen Imaging Service (where we image your samples on a SLICE system), and in select cases, on-site demos. Request a demonstration →
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Our service sets us apart, with a team that includes Ph.D. neuroscientists, experts in microscopy, stereology, neuron reconstruction, and image processing. We’ve also developed a host of additional support services, including:
At MBF, we’ve spent decades understanding the needs of researchers and their labs — and have a suite of products and solutions that have been specifically designed for the needs of today’s most important and advanced labs. Our commitment to you is to spend time with you discussing the needs of your lab — so that we can make sure the solutions we provide for you are exactly what you’ll need. It’s part of our commitment to supporting you — before, during, and after you’ve made your decision. We look forward to talking with you!
* Please note pricing may vary outside the US
