Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have developed a miniaturised, cloud-based microscope that enables continuous monitoring of brain activity and physiological changes in freely moving mice for more than 24 hours.

The device, called CloudScope, operates autonomously and allows researchers to remotely access live brain-imaging data. The federally funded study, published in Nature Methods, aims to address limitations of conventional imaging methods, which typically capture only short periods of disease progression.

According to the researchers, CloudScope can monitor changes in neuronal activity, blood flow, blood vessel remodelling, oxygenation and cellular behaviour over extended periods. The approach could provide a more detailed view of neurological and brain diseases as they develop.

Using the system, researchers captured spontaneous seizures occurring several hours after an experimentally induced seizure in mice. In separate brain cancer studies, the team observed the behaviour of individual cancer cells and changes in the surrounding brain microenvironment as the disease progressed.

The researchers describe the approach as ‘neurosurveillance,’ enabling continuous and remote observation of brain function and disease progression.

The study also demonstrated an artificial intelligence application. By combining 24-hour brain-imaging data with recordings of animal behaviour, researchers trained an AI framework to predict whether mice were minimally mobile, moderately active or running based solely on neuronal activity measurements.

The team believes the approach could support research into neurological conditions such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease and help investigate relationships between brain activity and behaviour. Remote, time-shared imaging could also potentially reduce animal use in research.

Researchers plan to expand CloudScope to image larger regions of the brain and use AI to accelerate brain imaging and cancer-cell tracking. The study was supported by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.