ConductVision Organoid Monitor

Kidney organoids, monitored 24/7

In a pilot, ConductVision measures each kidney organoid's size and shape and follows its visible cysts as they form, swell and fuse, from images taken every 5 to 15 minutes.

Plan a pilotWhat a pilot records
Microscope image of kidney organoids, many swollen into large translucent cysts with a darker patch of tissue at one side, and a 250 µm scale bar at lower right.
Adapted from Shamshirgaran et al. 2021 · CC BY 4.0

24/7 monitoring

What a pilot records for each kidney organoid

ConductVision records each measure for every visible organoid, keyed by plate, well, organoid ID and time.

MeasureWhat it showsHow often
Every organoid
Area
A brightfield image of spheroids, each outlined in yellow by OrganoSeg, a published tool, above three of them numbered beside the area OrganoSeg measured for each.
Adapted from Borten et al. 2018 · CC BY 4.0

The projected area of each organoid, with its longest and shortest diameters

Every 5 to 15 minutes
Growth rate
Phase-contrast images of an untreated cyst in a polycystic kidney disease organoid on days 1, 3, 7 and 14, growing from a small sphere to one that fills the frame.
Adapted from Gulieva et al. 2025 · CC BY 4.0

How fast each organoid grows or shrinks, per hour and per day

Every 5 to 15 minutes
Shape
Brightfield image of colorectal cancer organoids, round and irregular, each outlined in yellow by OrganoSeg, a published tool.
Adapted from Borten et al. 2018 · CC BY 4.0

How round, long or irregular each outline is

Every 5 to 15 minutes
Movement
Time-lapse microscope image of chicken embryo intestinal organoids in a gel, with dashed lines tracing how far six of them moved during the first day of culture.
Adapted from Pierzchalska et al. 2019 · CC BY 4.0

How far and how fast each organoid moves, where organoids are free to move

Every 5 to 15 minutes
Fusion
Time-lapse microscope images of chicken embryo intestinal organoids in a gel, in which two organoids, outlined in red and yellow, move together and fuse into one.
Adapted from Pierzchalska et al. 2019 · CC BY 4.0

Two organoids joining into one, with both parent IDs kept

Each time it happens
Fragmentation
Brightfield images of airway organoids 0, 24 and 48 hours after infection with a respiratory virus, breaking up over that time, beside mock-infected organoids at 48 hours.
Adapted from Stroulios et al. 2022 · CC BY 4.0

Organoids splitting or shedding pieces, each piece keeping its parent ID

Each time it happens
Structural collapse
Phase-contrast images of one polycystic kidney disease organoid cyst given 30 µM everolimus on days 0, 1, 3 and 14, shrinking from a round cyst to a small dark mass by day 1.
Adapted from Gulieva et al. 2025 · CC BY 4.0

A sudden loss of area, roundness or boundary, with a clip of the change

Each time it happens
Kidney organoids
Cysts
Microscope images of control and PKD1 knockout kidney organoids in suspension culture on days 10 and 13, where the knockout organoids formed large cysts.
Adapted from Li et al. 2022 · CC BY 4.0

Visible cysts as they appear and fuse, and each cyst's size where the camera resolves its edge

Every 5 to 15 minutes
Cyst swelling
Brightfield images of human kidney tubuloids grown in collagen domes with forskolin, at 0, 24, 48 and 72 hours, as their cysts grow larger.
Adapted from Rohe et al. 2026 · CC BY 4.0

How fast each cyst swells or shrinks

Every 5 to 15 minutes
Surface
Brightfield images of human kidney tubuloids grown in collagen domes, most of them round with smooth outlines, and grown in suspension, where they form irregular, folded clusters.
Adapted from Rohe et al. 2026 · CC BY 4.0

How smooth or folded each organoid's outline is

Every 5 to 15 minutes
Treatment response
Brightfield images of human kidney tubuloids at 0 and 72 hours, in medium only in the top row and with forskolin in the bottom row, where cysts grew.
Adapted from Rohe et al. 2026 · CC BY 4.0

How cysts and organoids change after a treatment, against your controls

Every 5 to 15 minutes

When a fusion, fragmentation or structural collapse begins, the camera images that well every minute until the change ends. Fragmentation and structural collapse describe what the camera sees in each organoid's outline, not whether its cells are alive.

Beyond the camera

What needs higher magnification or a dye

  • Fine tubules
  • Nephron structures
  • Fine epithelial layers
  • Cell polarity
Everything a camera cannot measure

Evidence

What published studies found in kidney organoids

Other research groups measured these in microscope images of kidney organoids with polycystic kidney disease (PKD) mutations.

Microscope image of one large, translucent cyst on day 58 of culture in PKD2 knockout kidney organoids.
Adapted from Freedman et al. 2015 · CC BY 4.0

Visible cysts

Knocking out the PKD1 or PKD2 gene made cysts form from kidney organoid tubules.1 Large, translucent cysts first appeared about 35 days after plating and kept expanding for the rest of the culture.1 To catch cysts as they form, a pilot has to start early in the culture or run for weeks.

Microscope images of control kidney organoids, dense and round, beside PKD1 knockout organoids, many swollen into translucent cysts, at two magnifications.
Adapted from Shamshirgaran et al. 2021 · CC BY 4.0

How often cysts form

In their own kidney model, Shamshirgaran and colleagues saw fluid-filled cyst-like structures in about 50% of PKD knockout organoids and in less than 1% of controls.2

Phase-contrast images of a PKD kidney organoid and a control organoid under fluid flow at 0 and 5 hours, in which the PKD organoid's cyst grew and the control did not swell.
Adapted from Li et al. 2022 · CC BY 4.0

Cyst swelling under flow

Li and colleagues put PKD organoids on a chip under fluid flow.3 Under flow, cysts grew by about 20,000 µm² of area an hour, while control organoids did not swell appreciably.3 Time-lapse imaging showed the cysts expanding and deflating in breath-like cycles within hours of the flow starting.3

Phase-contrast images of polycystic kidney disease organoid cysts on days 0 and 14, one given DMSO, which grew large, and one given AV457, which stayed smaller.
Adapted from Gulieva et al. 2025 · CC BY 4.0

Cyst size over time

Gulieva and colleagues measured the cyst area of each organoid on days 0, 1, 3, 7 and 14, from outlines drawn by hand.4 Two drugs, AV457 and everolimus, reduced cyst growth over time.4

Phase-contrast images of one polycystic kidney disease organoid cyst given 10 µM everolimus on days 0, 3, 7 and 14, still round on day 7 and small and dark by day 14.
Adapted from Gulieva et al. 2025 · CC BY 4.0

Shrinking cysts

At the highest everolimus doses, phase-contrast images showed the cysts breaking down, and the authors warn that toxicity can masquerade as efficacy.4 A pilot reports cyst shrinkage as a measurement and leaves its meaning to your own assays.

Camera specification

The cameras a pilot uses

Microscope images of the same patient-derived intestinal organoids when forskolin was added and one hour later, when their lumens had filled with fluid.
Adapted from Lefferts et al. 2024 · CC BY 4.0

Around the clock

  • A full stack of focal planes for every well, every 5 to 15 minutes
Brightfield image of mouse pancreas organoids, each with one large lumen, averaged from ten focal planes taken at 1.29 µm per pixel.
Adapted from Hof et al. 2021 · CC BY 4.0

Image

  • 2 µm or less per pixel
Human intestinal organoids in transmitted light, the dye-free imaging that OrgaSegment, a published tool, was built to analyze.
Adapted from Lefferts et al. 2024 · CC BY 4.0

Light

  • Brightfield LED light, with no dyes or labels
Images of one human cortical organoid taken inside an incubator at 0, 43 and 86 hours, growing larger, beside a chart of its area at each time point.
Adapted from Ly et al. 2021 · CC BY 4.0

Incubator

  • Inside your incubator, or in a chamber beside it that keeps the same conditions
Full camera specification

References

  1. Freedman BS, Brooks CR, Lam AQ, et al. (2015). Modelling kidney disease with CRISPR-mutant kidney organoids derived from human pluripotent epiblast spheroids. Nature Communications.
  2. Shamshirgaran Y, Jonebring A, Svensson A, et al. (2021). Rapid target validation in a Cas9-inducible hiPSC derived kidney model. Scientific Reports.
  3. Li SR, Gulieva RE, Helms L, et al. (2022). Glucose absorption drives cystogenesis in a human organoid-on-chip model of polycystic kidney disease. Nature Communications.
  4. Gulieva RE, Ahmadvand P, Freedman BS (2025). A novel rapalog shows improved safety vs. efficacy in a human organoid model of polycystic kidney disease. Stem Cell Reports.
  5. Borten MA, Bajikar SS, Sasaki N, et al. (2018). Automated brightfield morphometry of 3D organoid populations by OrganoSeg. Scientific Reports.
  6. Pierzchalska M, Panek M, Grabacka M (2019). The migration and fusion events related to ROCK activity strongly influence the morphology of chicken embryo intestinal organoids. Protoplasma.
  7. Stroulios G, Brown T, Moreni G, et al. (2022). Apical-out airway organoids as a platform for studying viral infections and screening for antiviral drugs. Scientific Reports.
  8. Rohe J, Ashraf APK, Kehl M, et al. (2026). Modelling kidney cystogenesis using human kidney tubuloid cultures. BMC Molecular and Cell Biology.
  9. Lefferts JW, Kroes S, Smith MB, et al. (2024). OrgaSegment: deep-learning based organoid segmentation to quantify CFTR dependent fluid secretion. Communications Biology.
  10. Hof L, Moreth T, Koch M, et al. (2021). Long-term live imaging and multiscale analysis identify heterogeneity and core principles of epithelial organoid morphogenesis. BMC Biology.
  11. Ly VT, Baudin PV, Pansodtee P, et al. (2021). Picroscope: low-cost system for simultaneous longitudinal biological imaging. Communications Biology.

Plan a kidney organoid pilot

Tell us about your kidney organoids, your plates and the cyst question you want answered.

Plan a pilotAll organoid models