Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2019-08-29
Buyer: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Country: UK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Contract award without prior publication
CPV classification: 33110000: Imaging equipment for medical use | 38510000
Estimated value: 427000 GBP

Technical requirements: The LSHTM wish to inform the market that they intend to award a contract for the supply, installation and maintenance (including warranty) of an automated live cell imaging system, Zeiss Celldiscoverer 7, within the faculty of Infectious and Tropical Disease at the LSHTM.
The system is to be used to study the cell biology of infection using tissue culture cells and zebrafish larvae.
The equipment will augment the Zeiss LSM 880 Fast Airyscan confocal microscope and Zeiss AXioObserver inverted microscope already used in the laboratory.
AxioObserver inverted microscope currently used. The modular nature of these microscopes allows us to interchange a number of critical components and also to share an even larger pool of compatible accessories, protocols, software, memory storage and ancillary components across our existing systems.
We require a number of features that are unique, or unique in combination, that are essential for current and future work. Only some of these features exist in competitor instruments but none can meet all these technical requirements.
3) All objectives temperature stabilised for best possible stability in long term imaging experiments;
4) Automatic water immersion, with automatic correction of spherical aberrations for working distances up to 2,2 mm;
5) Automatic adaptation to vessel bottom material and thickness for best signal, optimal resolution and depth penetration;
7) Unique relief contrast in transmitted light compatible with all objectives, filter sets, sample carriers (glass and plastics) and with liquid meniscus and small wells;
8) TL-contrast adapts to sample carrier geometry for optimal contrast to the very edge of the vessels;
10) Unique detector for high sensitivity mode with at least 1.5x increased resolution vs. confocal and 4 -8x better SNR vs. conventional confocal;
11) Mode for fast and gentle confocal live cell imaging with up to 8.4 FPS (524 x 524), compatible with all objectives;
12) Mixed mode for combined acquisition of camera and LSM tracks ensuring precise overlay of widefield and confocal and Airyscan images;
13) Confocal imaging in reflection mode, sequential spectral imaging and linear unmixing, ROI bleaching, interactive bleaching on a fully automated inverted platform.
The combination of many of these unique technical points is critical to our work. In summary, this system allows us to increase the output of our lab without having to sacrifice anything with regards to image quality. This system also incorporates the unique Airyscan detector, the principle of which is as follows: the optical resolution of a confocal microscope is improved the more the pinhole is closed. However, the loss of signal will require ever more aggressive imaging conditions (e.g. higher laser power, longer pixel dwell time, averaging, etc.). The ZEISS Airyscan detector’s unique and patented design has an optical resolution corresponding to 0.2 AU pinhole diameter and efficiency corresponding to 1.25 AU, and thus demonstrates superior resolution and sensitivity compared to a standard confocal microscope, and superior flexibility and pricing compared with specialised systems, e.g. super-resolution based set-ups.


Winner: Carl Zeiss Ltd
Award value: 427000