• Define your research question: What would you like to investigate? E.g.: quntitative measurements or qualitative measurements? Do similar experiments/protocols already exist that may guide you?
• Choose the appropriate instrument. If you need help to choose the right instrument for your applications or your research question, do not hesitate to visit our regular Open Office sessions or reach out to us by mail.
• Obtain the relevant training certificate and send all relevant documents to us.
• Sign up for updates from the Bioimaging Core Facility via e-mail.
• Get the relevant introduction and use the instrument.
• Analyse data using our selection of software.
• Acknowledge the Bioimaging Core Facility in your publication.

To ensure system longevity and the best experience for all our users, we kindly ask you to adhere to our rules and regulations at all times.

Please also consult our FAQ.

By using AU Health bioimaging core facility equipment, you agree with our general rules:

• All users, even experienced ones, must be trained by the Bioimaging Core Facility staff before using any microscope for the first time. Please refer to our pricelist for information about trainings.

• In order to use a microscope, you must book a time slot by using the online booking system.

• You are not allowed to book a microscope for someone else.

• For security reasons, surfing the internet, downloading files, checking your e-mail account etc. is not allowed from our computers. You are allowed to visit our website and the online booking system.

• IMPORTANT NOTE: Use of USB memory sticks or external hard drives is not allowed.  

• The Bioimaging Core Facility is not responsible for your data. DATA ON LOCAL PC DRIVES WILL BE DELETED ON A REGULAR BASIS in order to keep the systems performing optimally.

• After using a microscope or a workstation, please transfer your data immediately to the your personal AU drive (O:) and clean up your local directories on instrument PCs. Staff will support non-AU users to export data.

• No food or drinks are allowed inside the microscope rooms.

• After use, clean any oil/water from objective lenses with a piece of folded lens paper found next to the microscopes. Please do not use ordinary tissues. Leave the microscope rooms neat and clean for the next user. Please notify the staff if you find that any of the Bioimaging Core Facility's areas are in an unacceptable state.

Data acquisition:

• For data acquisition, you can write your data onto the local PC's Data drive (usually D:, sometimes E:, NEVER C:) or,
• if the connection is fast enough (if you did that before), you can directly write your data onto your O: -drive.
• If you usually re-use settings from a previous experiment, you are welcome to keep an ongoing experiment locally on D: in case the network connection does not work. Please remember to remove data from older experiments from D:
• D: is not to be used as data storage place.
• At the end of every microscopy session, data need to be transferred via O: -drive (currently, you cannot use Erda directly on our computers and we will let you know if it becomes an option in the future).
• External harddrives or usb sticks are not allowed on our systems.

Data transfer:

• After every imaging session, you need to transfer your data onto your group's O: drive.
• If you don't have a group O: -drive, please contact us about the possibility to access our facility's temporary transfer drive. Data need to be actively removed again by you after max. 2 days (optimally 1 day). Data on this drive will regularly be deleted without warning. (We are testing this as a new service and will only keep this option if it works)
• If you regularly produce data sets of >1TB, please talk to us about a custom solution.
• External harddrives or usb sticks are not allowed on our systems.

Data storage:

• It is not possible to use our microscope or image analysis computers or the data transfer drive for your data storage, only for temporary work/transfer.
• The facility does not offer any data storage space or support to set it up for you.
• You are responsible to find a storage solution within your group, ask your local IT support if you have not been contacted about Erda or other options. IT have also kindly set up a mail helpline for questions concerning Erda: erda-info.it@au.dk