Instruments and imaging
Good measurements often depend on an instrument that is either too expensive or too specialised, so we develop methods and instruments that others can reproduce. In a long-standing collaboration with Guillaume Charras and his team, we contributed to the development of a protocol to grow an epithelium between two glass capillaries and stretch it free of any substrate, enabling the mechanical characterisation of the tissue (Harris et al., Nature Protocols 2013). We developed a method to compress migrating cells gently and uniformly while they are imaged (Srivastava, Kay and Kabla, Molecular Biology of the Cell 2017). In collaboration with Marius Linguraru (then in Robert Howe's group at Harvard), we developed image analysis that tracks the motion of atrial septal defects, holes in the wall of the heart, in real-time 3D ultrasound, to guide their closure in children (Linguraru et al., Academic Radiology 2007). We also helped develop open and low-cost tools: a one-piece 3D-printed flexure stage for microscopy, which can be printed and replicated by anyone (Sharkey et al., Review of Scientific Instruments 2016, with Richard Bowman), and autohaem, a 3D-printed device that automates the preparation of blood smears for malaria diagnosis (McDermott et al., Review of Scientific Instruments 2022, with Pietro Cicuta).