Home made epi-fluorescence microscope set-up for time lapse study of biological process.

Astrocytes use the modulation of cellular $Ca^{++}$ concentration for intracellular signaling. In order to observe fast cellular processes in controlled environment, we have assembled an epi-fluorescence microscope that can be fitted inside a medium size cell incubator. We have resorted to raspberry Pi and open-source tools to acquire full control on camera setting and illumination sequences. We have used python programming to control the data acquisition and to automate the extraction of relevant physical information from image sequences. In this way we are able to capture long time lapse recording of flashing sequences by astrocytes in vitro at frame rates ranging from millisecond to seconds. In this contribution we will illustrate the instrument implementation and present some preliminary results on human and mouse astrocytes cell cultures.