Attending the Czech-BioImaging Annual Conference 2025

“Imaging Principles of Life” is the annual scientific conference organised by Czech-BioImaging, gathering imaging core facility staff and users of  Infrastructure and open to anyone interested in imaging methods, spanning from light and electron microscopy, multimodal and correlative imaging to preclinical and medical imaging. This year, the conference was held in Brno from 17th to 19th September, and it provided a nice opportunity to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Czech-BioImaging together with the users of the facilities and the scientific community at large. Our Head of Operations at the Med-Hub, Alessandra Viale, had the pleasure of attending the conference and visiting the facilities at the Multimodal Imaging Node Brno.

“Imaging Principles of Life” 2025

The conference started with a short presentation by the Director of Czech-BioImaging, Prof. Pavel Hozák,  tracing the history of Czech-BioImaging, from the original idea of creating an imaging infrastructure to support scientists with their research, to the endorsement by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, up to the formal establishment in 2015. Since then, the growth of Czech-BioImaging has been impressive: in 2024 alone, 1.372 users accessed the 16 facilities that are part of the infrastructure, a number that has more than doubled in 8 years of operation. In addition, 230 papers were published and more than 1.000 trainees attended Czech-BioImaging training courses.

Equally important, the equipment and the facility staff have also grown, with the acquisition of new up-to-date technologies and expertise, which is essential for successfully responding to increasing user demand, as comprehensively presented by the facilities’ leaders (Milan Esner, head of the MUNI CELLIM CEITEC Core facility in Brno, Michal Mikl, Vice-Chair for Medical Imaging and Head of the Euro-BioImaging Multimodal Imaging Node Brno, Maria Vancova, Vice-Chair for Electron Microscopy) during the conference. Finally, Michal Kozubek, Vice-Chair for Light Microscopy and Data Management, presented the ongoing work for creating a national repository of FAIR image data through the two EOSC projects Open Science I and II.

Important scientific advancements

But “Imaging the Principles of Life” is mainly a scientific conference, and it is always exciting to hear about scientific advancements that are made possible by multimodal, multiscale imaging. A number of interesting talks and posters were presented by researchers on a variety of different topics including e.g. neuroscience, plant biology, infection biology, imaging methods development, cellular signalling and others. Interestingly, quite a few contributions dealt with the use of multimodal imaging technologies, coupling e.g. electron microscopy or advanced light microscopy techniques with micro-CT or MRI to expand the range of information achievable to answer scientific questions, for example - but not limited to - in the field of bone regeneration or for studying calcium oscillations in the brain associated to stroke. 

It was especially great to hear all the positive feedback from users who got access to the technologies and, even more importantly and more appreciated by the users, to the expertise and precious support of the staff at Czech-BioImaging facilities and Euro-BioImaging Czech nodes.

Visiting the Multimodal Imaging Node Brno

Since the conference was held near Brno, Alessandra Viale, Head of Operations at Euro-BioImaging Med-Hub, visited the three facilities that are part of the Multimodal Imaging Node Brno, namely the Cellular Imaging Core facility (CELLIM) and the Multimodal and Functional Imaging Laboratory (MAFIL) at CEITEC and the preclinical MRI unit at the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the CAS. The three facilities cover all the imaging scales from subcellular to whole organisms, both animals and humans, and are equipped with state of the art advanced microscopes, preclinical high field MRI - potentially coupled with highly focussed US for increasing permeability of the blood brain barrier -, and clinical MRI coupled with EEG for functional imaging studies including dual functional MRI, which is quite a unique technique in Euro-BioImaging. Recently, the facilities have undergone substantial modernization, including the acquisition of new instruments and the upgrade of existing systems.

Of note, the Node is deeply involved in building the national image data repository, with a special focus on neuroimaging data.

An inspiring visit - thanks to the organisers!

Beside the imaging equipment, the staff at the Node is well experienced and can support users also for the development and optimisation of the imaging protocols and sequences that better fit their scientific needs. 

Overall, attending the Czech-BioImaging conference and visiting the Brno Node was really inspiring, big thanks to the organizers of the conference and to the Node staff who made this experience possible!