GE Healthcare Life Sciences today announced Jane Stout, from the United States, Anushree Balachandran from Australia and Markus Posch from the UK as the winners of the GE Healthcare 2012 Cell Imaging Competition. With over 15,000 votes cast in a public vote, the winners can now look forward to seeing their prize-winning cellular images displayed in Times Square, New York on NBC Universal’s HD screen at a special event on April 19-21, 2013.

Now in its sixth year, GE Healthcare’s annual competition showcases the beauty of cells and the inspiring research conducted by cellular biologists around the world.

In 2012, for the first time, there were two categories for submission; High-Content Analysis and Microscopy. The competition attracted over 100 entries from researchers who are investigating at the cellular level conditions such as cancer, HIV, and neurodegenerative disease. An expert scientific panel of five judges short-listed the finalists for each category, which then went forward to the public vote, stated the company.

For the first place in the Microscopy category, Jane Stout, School of Medicine, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA focused on cancer and depicted the metaphase epithelial cell stained for microtubules (red), kinetochores (green) and DNA (blue).

In the High-Content Analysis category, Anushree Balachandran, Genea, Sydney, Australia depicted Huntington's stem cell derived oligodendrocyte precursors stained for phalloidin (green), vinculin (red) and DNA (blue).

Under the regional winner for the Microscopy category, it was Markus Posch, Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression, University of Dundee, UK who provided the image of prometaphase human cervical carcinoma (HeLa) cell with GFP-histone labelled chromosomes (blue) stained for tubulin (yellow).

“This year’s winning images are as beautiful and compelling as ever. Not only can they be appreciated from an aesthetic point of view, but they remind us of the cellular complexity behind disease and why the study of cells is so important. We were delighted to receive so many outstanding entries to the competition, which highlights how high-content and super-resolution cell imaging are helping scientists explore the universe of the cell, and so advance our understanding of so many life threatening and life-limiting diseases,” said Eric Roman, general manager of Research and Applied Markets, GE Healthcare Life Sciences.

This year’s short-list was selected by Dr Kristie Nybo, assistant editor at BioTechniques, Dr Julian Heath, editor, Microscopy & Analysis, Dr Nick Thomas, principal scientist, GE Healthcare, Dr Paul Goodwin, science director at GE Healthcare, and former GE Healthcare Cell Imaging Competition winner Dr Leslie Caron, research scientist at Genea.

The Cell Imaging Competition, supported by BioTechniques, celebrates the exceptional research of scientists across the world using IN Cell Analyzer, DeltaVision Elite and DeltaVision OMX systems in their work.