A microfluidic positioning chamber for long-term live-cell imaging.

We report a microfluidic positioning chamber (MPC) that can rapidly and repeatedly relocate the same imaging area on a microscope stage. The "roof" of the microfluidic chamber was printed with serials of coordinate numbers that act as positioning marks for mammalian cells that grow attached to the "floor" of the microfluidic chamber. MPC cell culture chamber provided a simple solution for tracking the same cell or groups of cells over days or weeks. The positioning marks were used to register time-lapse images of the same imaging area to single-pixel accuracy. Using MPC cell culture chamber, we tracked the migration, division, and differentiation of individual PC12 cells for over a week using bright field and fluorescence imaging.