Newly Upgraded Software Suite Expands Microscopy Applications

A newly upgraded software suite improves image acquisition, processing, and analysis for most applications including widefield, confocal, and super-resolution microscopy.

Leica Microsystems (Wetzlar, Germany) has launched the easy-to-use Leica Application Suite X (LAS X) imaging software for biotech and life sciences research laboratories. LAS X is the successor to the popular LAS AF software package.


LAS X begins with the LAS X Core unit that features microscope control, full image viewer capability, diverse processing and quantification tools, movie export, the ability to recall imaging parameters and much more. Several application packages are available that enhance the versatility of the core unit. These include modules for specific tasks such as high content screening, FRET (Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer), FRAP (Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching), multidimensional analysis, and colocalization measurements.

For live cell applications, hardware-based Adaptive Focus Control (AFC) and software-based autofocus are integrated in LAS X. Experimental conditions such as temperature, carbon dioxide and oxygen levels are documented and controlled with the Environmental Control module. For long-term time-lapse and screening experiments, the software-controlled microdispenser compensates for evaporation.

LAS X enables easy multichannel analysis of even complicated fluorescent experiments. A separate analysis channel can be created for each fluorescent marker and assigned an individual workflow. Analysis of all aspects of the sample can then be run at the same time. Combined analyses from separate channels generate specific object data. For example, one analysis channel can count healthy cells on a stained color image while a second analysis channel counts abnormal cells.

Markus Schechter, product manager at Leica Microsystems, said, "In developing the new imaging software platform LAS X, we have focused on the user-friendliness of the software. We have taken common workflows most users know and follow into account and translated them into software and this way continued the workflow-based approach of the predecessor LAS AF."

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