High-speed multifunctional scanning ion conductance microscopy: Innovative strategies to study dynamic cellular processes

The latest contributions of scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM) to current research in life sciences are reviewed. The continued efforts toward technical improvements in SICM hardware and software resulted in development of new scanning strategies and instrumental designs. Enhanced high-speed mapping supported the capture of very fast cellular processes at the nanoscale, such as secretory events or cilia movements or the contraction cycle of a cardiomyocyte. The noninvasive scanning capability allowed researchers to monitor the response of individual live cells to chemical stimulations in real time. Access to new kinds of information that can be extracted from experimental data with the support of numerical simulations was demonstrated, thus extending further SICM multifunction capability.