IMPACT was established in 1997 and is a facility of the Centre for Integrative Physiology (CIP), in the School of Biomedical Sciences (SMBS); it is used by researches from within and without the SBMS. 

Our aim is to provide both high quality imaging equipment and expertise in imaging for the biomedical and life science research community in Edinburgh.  IMPACT hosts a broad range of imaging modalities, enabling researches to acquire data over several orders of spatial and temporal scale – confocal, multi-photon, widefield, TIRFM and TCSPC-FLIM.  All these techniques are supported by a high-speed local data network and several high-end workstations running communally available image analysis software.

There is a full time facility manager within IMPACT who is available to help with experimental planning, microscope training, image restoration and data analysis.  At present the facility includes a Leica confocal system funded by the Wellcome Trust, two Zeiss confocal systems purchased with a SHEFC project grant and an Olympus total internal reflection wide-field microscope system.  The instruments are designed for analysis of multiple fluorphores on fixed or live samples.