Cultivating cells may take days to weeks, making it difficult to monitor morphological changes. The long-term time-lapse monitoring of cells can provide reliable data about cell growth and death, and morphological changes. Cell proliferation and death measurement is a basic function in drug toxicity and safety testing, as well as in biotherapeutic research.
Continuous monitoring of cells in the same environments may require environmental regulators as well as monitoring systems. A high-quality microscope and incubator simply cost too much to use just to check for morphological changes of cells and their confluence. Unfortunately, until recently there were no compact microscopes that could be easily placed inside a thermo-hygrostat.