The intravital microscopy technique allows studying cell trafficking in the most physiological context by looking directly into organ microcirculation of living animals.
Digital movie acquisition allows precise quantification of different aspects of cell recruitment, such as speed of rolling or duration of arrest, by means of frame-by-frame image analysis.
The intravital microscopy facility is complemented by the 2-photon microscopy facility, to study microenvironmental positioning of migrated cells.
Laudanna C, Constantin G. New models of intravital microscopy for analysis of chemokine receptor-mediated leukocyte vascular recognition. J Immunol Methods. 2003 Feb;273(1-2):115-23.