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Colleagues,

My supervisor has been contacted by one of the high-content screening device companies.  They are pitching an HCS device with confocal scanning abilities.  Since the HCS instrument can scan multi-well plates and microscope slides, as well as provide environmental conditions for live cells, he was wondering if it would be suitable as an entry-level confocal for some of our users with non-demanding and/or functional live-cell assay kind of needs?

I recognize that every optical instrument has compromises, are there compromises that we don’t want to make?  Seems like most of the HCS systems favor dry lenses, with corresponding lower NAs at any given mag.

The one concern I have is that the device might allow people to collect bad data faster.  See Dave Piston’s recent comment in Nature entitled “Research tools: Understand how it works”, Nature 484, 440–441 (26 April 2012) doi:10.1038/484440a

I am particularly interested in hearing from people who might have experience with both point-scanning confocals and HCS instruments.

Thanks.
Doug