On June 1, RIKEN BSI – OLYMPUS Collaboration Center (RIKEN BOCC) opened at the Brain Science Institute(BSI) in Wako. This center is the cooperative research hub between RIKEN and Olympus Corporation, one of the leading Japanese manufacturers of consumer digital cameras and medical and lifescience research instrument. It is the first organization in RIKEN set up under the name of a private company. RIKEN BOCC shares the research resources of RIKEN and Olympus, to contribute to progress in life sciences research over the next generation with a mid- to long-term outlook.
RIKEN BOCC will carry out developing bioscience imaging systems and the technology related to them. It will have the most advanced instruments in bio-imaging research, and two engineers are dispatched from Olympus to provide technical support for their use in sample preparation, instrument manipulation and observation. In addition to the research, the center will promote the popularization of bio-imaging technology by holding workshops and symposiums open to researchers outside RIKEN.
The most attractive instrument available at the center is the multi photon excitation laser scanning microscope. Multi photon excitation by a near-infrared laser enables imaging deep into an organism without damaging it. This microscope equips two lasers to study deep into the brain; one is used to observe the tissue at a depth of 500–800 micrometres and the other is used simultaneously to do optical stimulation the brain by laser. The center also owns an incubation imaging system that can study the cell function while it is cultured over few days.
