First FlowCam in Iceland

Mia Cerfonteyn, PhD student engaged in MIME, working at MFRI with the new FlowCam.

The long-awaited FlowCam (Fluid Imaging Technologies) arrived at MFRI last month and is installed in our laboratory for environmental research.

This dynamic imaging instrument is used for phytoplankton analysis and was funded by the Rannís Infrastructure Fund. It will be utilized in analysis of phytoplankton from seawater samples, including that collected for the project Microbes in the Icelandic Marine Environment (MIME), a collaboration between Matís and MFRI that was financed for three years by Rannís Grant of Excellence 2016.

FlowCam analysis will form a substantial part of Mia Cerfonteyn’s research at MFRI, during her project engagement, and the results presented in her PhD thesis titled The distribution, diversity and abundance of phytoplankton in Icelandic marine waters in context of environmental change.

The VisualSpreadsheet software creates a collage of images which can subsequently be classified into different phytoplankton groups using image recognition code and image libraries (e.g. Thalassiosira chains).