As the year comes to a close, it’s a perfect time to look back on a period of growth, innovation, and collaboration at Yokogawa Fluid Imaging Technologies, and to set our sights on what’s next in 2026. From expanding global support to advancing customer research, this year underscored our commitment to enabling breakthrough insights across industries and applications.
Expanding Support and Connections
This past winter, we strengthened our European support and field service teams, bringing local expertise closer to customers across the continent. This expansion allowed faster, more responsive service and deeper collaboration with FlowCam users.
We also hosted our global colleagues from Yokogawa in November for an intensive training summit. Our partners worked closely with in-house scientific team members to deepen their understanding of FlowCam and VisualSpreadsheet, preparing them to provide enhanced support to our customers. Of course, no visit to Maine is complete without a lobster dinner!
These improvements highlighted how building strong, local relationships helps researchers get the most from their instruments—a focus that will continue into 2026.
Nurturing Talent and Collaboration
Our FlowCam Intern Program
welcomed the next generation of scientists, who contributed to lab projects, hardware and software development, and data analysis. Their work not only accelerated our initiatives but also enriched the learning experience of our team.
In addition, the FlowCam Team Gathering in September strengthened internal collaboration, allowing our global team to share insights, align strategies, and plan for the coming year.
These efforts reinforce our belief that investing in people—both inside and outside the company—is essential for sustained innovation.
Product and Software Highlights
This year, VisualSpreadsheet 6.1 delivered updates that promise to help researchers organize, share, and act on FlowCam data more effectively.
- Metadata tagging now allows users to capture details such as sample origin, collection conditions, and experimental parameters. These tags make large datasets easier to organize, search, and manage, helping researchers quickly access and analyze relevant information.
- The optional Compliance Package for regulated biopharmaceutical environments provides 21 CFR Part 11 support, enabling secure, traceable workflows with audit trails and customizable user permissions. This ensures that regulated laboratories can meet electronic record requirements with confidence.
- For aquatic research, users can now export particle images and metadata for EcoTaxa, an online platform that supports collaborative studies and facilitates the use of machine learning workflows for large-scale environmental monitoring.
Together, these features make VisualSpreadsheet 6.1 a flexible, user‑focused platform for turning FlowCam imagery into actionable insights, whether in regulated labs or field research. We look forward to continuing to innovate in 2026, with ongoing improvements to both hardware and software to better serve our customers’ evolving needs.
Engaging with the Scientific Community
Throughout the year, we continued to connect with researchers and industry professionals by attending conferences, presenting webinars, and participating in workshops around the world. These events provided opportunities to share the latest FlowCam applications, highlight customer successes, and discuss best practices in particle imaging and analysis.
These engagements strengthened our relationships with the scientific community and provided valuable insights that inform both product development and customer support. Make sure to stay informed of our upcoming events, including two exciting webinars for biopharma applications next quarter:
Advancing Biologic and Parenteral Development Through Flow Imaging Microscopy: Positive Controls, Device Compatibility, and Investigational Case Studies
Speaker: Brooke Trimmer, Gilead Sciences
Addressing Subvisible Silicone Oil Droplets—Industry Challenges, Analytical Strategies, and USP’s Rationale for a New General Informational Chapter
Speakers: Desmond G Hunt, Senior Principal Scientist at US Pharmacopeia, Laura A. Philips, PhD, MBA President and Chief Executive Officer Spheryx, Inc., Tyler Carter, PhD, Senior Application Scientist, at Yokogawa Fluid Imaging Technologies
Supporting Customer Research Across Applications
In 2025, FlowCam continued to empower research across multiple fields:
Biopharma: We collaborated with Corning Life Sciences to show how FlowCam imaging can support quality control of 3D cell cultures, and a proposed USP informational chapter highlighted the need for orthogonal analytical techniques—especially flow imaging microscopy —to accurately detect, quantify, and distinguish subvisible silicone oil particles in biopharmaceuticals.
Aquatic science: We provided new resources to our customers, including lessons on leveraging AI-based classification, an identification guide to phytoplankton taxa, several highly-informative webinars, and a step-by-step technical note on using FlowCam's new metadata and EcoTaxa export features. We also continue to regularly add emerging FlowCam research to our Bibliography.
Looking Ahead to 2026
With a strong foundation in place, 2026 promises to be a year of continued innovation and collaboration. We will focus on advancing analytical capabilities to support complex scientific inquiries, scaling software tools to make high-throughput imaging even more actionable, and strengthening partnerships with research communities and industry leaders. At the same time, we aim to expand education and support offerings to help users succeed across diverse applications. We’re excited to continue this journey with our customers, partners, and collaborators—exploring the new discoveries and innovations that lie ahead.
Happy New Year!
