Real-Time Cell Insights with Agilent xCELLigence RTCA eSight
A Joe Blogs post by Joe Roberts, PhD
Cells don’t stand still, so why should your assays? The Agilent xCELLigence RTCA eSight™ goes beyond snapshots, revealing real-time cell behaviour with label-free impedance and live imaging.
By pairing biosensor impedance technology with live-cell imaging, eSight enables researchers to monitor cell health, function, and behaviour simultaneously, continuously, and in real time. It’s not just more data, it’s deeper, more meaningful insight into what your cells are really doing.
How Real Time Cell Analysis (RTCA) Technology Works
At the heart of RTCA eSight are proprietary E-Plates, embedded with gold biosensors. These electrodes non-invasively measure impedance, which reflects cell metrics such as:
- Proliferation
- Adhesion strength
- Morphological changes
- Migration and differentiation
Because impedance is recorded continuously, you capture events as they happen, in seconds, minutes, hours, or days, without disturbing the cells. The temporal resolution is exquisite, allowing you to see subtle shifts long before they’re visible under a microscope.
Multi-Modal Cell Analysis: Impedance Meets Live-Cell Imaging
In concert with impedance, eSight’s imaging module provides brightfield plus three fluorescence channels (red, green, blue). This lets you visualise your cells directly while validating and enriching the kinetic impedance data.
The result is a spatial and temporal view of cell populations at an unprecedented level of detail, ideal for assays like proliferation, cytotoxicity, and apoptosis. And importantly, impedance and imaging are performed on the same cells, not replicate wells, so your data are directly correlated.
Streamlined RTCA Workflow
One setup, two data streams. Here’s how simple it is:
- Seed your cells into an E-Plate.
- Insert the plate into eSight (inside your incubator).
- Define your assay in the RTCA software.
From there, impedance and imaging data are captured automatically, then integrated into a single timeline for straightforward analysis. The software even supports outputs like:
- RTCA images
- KT50 (time to 50% cytolysis at a given effector-to-target ratio)
- % Cytolysis dose response curves
- IC50 calculations
No juggling between platforms – just a unified dataset ready for export.
Applications Across the Board
Researchers are already applying RTCA eSight to:
- Immune-cell killing assays – track cytolysis in real time with kinetic precision.
- Virology – Screening and characterizing antiviral drugs in real time
- Proliferation and apoptosis studies – capture early events, validate with imaging, and overlay with fluorescent markers.
- Cell heterogeneity analysis – reveal subpopulation responses that would be lost in averaged data.
Joe’s Takeaway
The Agilent xCELLigence RTCA eSight is more than the sum of its parts. By integrating patented biosensor impedance with live-cell imaging, it delivers:
- Continuous, label-free monitoring of cell health and function
- Brightfield and Three-colour live-cell imaging for direct visual validation
- Unified kinetic datasets from the same cell population
- Broad versatility across immuno-oncology, virology, and general cell biology
For researchers who want to move beyond static snapshots, eSight offers a powerful new way to see biology unfold in real time, with the reproducibility, temporal resolution, and ease-of-use that modern labs demand.
If you’re interested in a demo of the eSight, contact us today!
Until next time… happy experimenting!
