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time-lapse

Time-lapse refers to capturing still images at intervals of several seconds to several hours and playing back the sequence as a movie. In fields of research and development that use cultured cells, it is used to observe the temporal changes in the morphology, quantity, and location of cells and organelles that are hard to detect with the human eye.
In time-lapse photography of cells, it is often necessary to track cells on the order of ten to several tens of micrometers, so a variety of creative approaches have been devised for observation instruments. Some instruments can measure small movements of cells and cancel slight displacement in the XY directions during repeated imaging or acquire multiple Z-axis images to extract the most in-focus image.