We are pleased to announce the winners of the LMA/VIA 2021 Image Competition.

This resulted in over 160 submissions across the si x categories Live Cell Imaging, Life Sciences, In Vivo Imaging, Materials Sciences, Super Resolution and Volume Imaging).

Each category awards a $400 first prize and a $200 second prize. We would like to thank the sponsors of each category, New Spec, Zeiss Australia, OptiScan , John Morris Group and Nikon Australia for their support of the competition.

Please follow the links below to see this years winners.

Live Cell Category Winners
Life Science Category Winners
In Vivo Category Winners
Materials Science Category Winners
Super Resolution Category Winners

VOLUME IMAGING CATEGORY

Proudly Sponsored by Zeiss

1ST PRIZE

Brett Lewis – Queensland University of Technology

The Corals Beneath – 3D. This video is of a lone coral polyp in a sea of thousands of clones that normally make up a colonial reef-building coral. It shows the coral polyp, its cells and the structures that would generally be hidden from standard imaging techniques – including the polyps retractor muscles, gastrodermal cavity,
mesenteries and mesenterial filaments – and all in three dimensions. The image was taken on a Nikon A1r inverted confocal fluorescence microscope with excitation lasers in the DAPI, FITC, TRITC, and Cy5 range. This is a Z-stacked image made up of approx. 60 images taken over 36 hours. Images are of the corals natural autofluorescence emitting in Cyan (CFP’s), Green (GFP’s), Red and near infra-red (RFP’s). Orange/pink is
the coral’s symbiotic algae, blue and green and the corals supporting cells and mucocytes, and the red cells in the tentacle tips are the stinging nematocysts.

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2ND PRIZE

Kate Brody – University of Melbourne

Visualising the Cochlea. This video shows a guinea pig cochlea which has been labelled with four antibodies using immunofluorescence. It has been imaged using Light Sheet Microscopy (LSM) on the Ultramicroscope II. The video shows the cochlea initially labelled with in antibody against NaKATAPase alpha 3 (in the red) showing the neuronal structures within the cochlea. Next the blood vessels and myo-fibrotic tissue are then added in (blue) labelled with a smooth muscle actin antibody. Then at higher digital magnification IBA1 labelled macrophages in green can be seen and vimentin in purple showing other fibrotic and structural tissue.

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DISTINCTION

Zhuang Tian – University of Technology Sydney

Magneto Aligned Nickel Particles in Cement This image was obtained under X ray computed tomography It shows 25 mm nickel particles aligned by 0 25 T magnetic field in the fresh state of cement paste The chain pattern is kept with the consolidation process of the cement The purpose is to investigate the piezoresistive performance of the composites

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DISTINCTION

Darren Brown – Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland

Melanoma Spheroids in 3D 3D model of melanoma spheroids Melanoma cells grown in collagen were fixed in 2 glutaraldehyde, stained with potassium ferrocyanide and osmium tetroxide, and then post fixed in 1 thiocarbohydrazide Samples were further stained with lead nitrate and processed for serial block face
scanning EM Samples were sectioned and imaged on a Zeiss Sigma Gatan 3 View electron microscope (Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, The University of Queensland) EM stacks were assembled and reconstructed in 3 D using IMOD visualisation software (University of Colorado, Boulder) and colour optimized in Adobe Photoshop Invading cells plasma membrane ( Gold) Nuclei ( non invading cells plasma membrane (Gold), Nuclei (Blue), non-invading cells plasma membrane (White).