Posted by
Mancini, Michael A on
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NIshigandha,
I can't help with the animal imaging, but we've evaluated a lot of HTM scopes and software over the last several years for HCS. I list below a few questions regarding the project needs of your group that should help narrow the scopes/software to go after.
1. Not surprisingly, what is the budget? There are scopes from not much over 100K to about a million or more.....
2. What are the assays your group wants to run? Will they run effectively on low mag/low NA lenses, or do they require higher mag/NA lenses? Many manufacturers cater specifically to the larger market of lower mag/lower NA hardware since that's all some assays need. Fewer scopes will be able to autofocus on 40x/0.95NA or 60-100x water/oil lenses where, in my opinion, the most data can be obtained for any number of assays (albeit at a slower rate) .
3. how fast do you need to go? how big will your experiments be? If you're after a genome wide RNAi screen or a large compound library vs a focused compound/RNAi libraries, the speed requirements are obviously very different.
4. do you have a bunch of programers that will be in charge of custom development of assays, or do you need "canned" assays that anyone can push a button to run? it seems the earlier 'locked-down' software is shifting to being increasingly fully customizable, perhaps due to the increased academic market.
5. what is the processing speed of the software that comes with the scope and/or the 3rd party software for image analyses? I can't argue enough for being able to fully customize protocols, and the need for fast image processing (unless you have a large cluster to crunch data).
6. make sure you plan for a means to catch all the image data, and how you're going to store it short/long term. tape backups fail (i'm told) 10% of the time. hard drives WILL fail.
7. i haven't seen a commercial database for image analysis, yet, that comes close to handling all the info from LIMS data to image data to compound/RNAi management to image analysis, but there again it is a question of SCALE. if, for example, you're getting an HTM to run in a small lab or small departmental core, many of these questions would elicit different answers...
Note to vendors:
I invite vendors to write me on or off line to share specifications for HTMs that are validated to focus at 40x/0.95 and above, as we are considering new scope purchases for 2008. Also, vendors with full blown LIMS+HTM image data management + querying+stats+reporting are encouraged to provide information.
Cheers,
Mike
Michael A. Mancini, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Director, Integrated Microscopy Core
Co-Director, Gulf Coast Consortium for Chemical Genomics
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, TX 77030
713 798 8952 voice
713 798 3017 fax
713 408 0179 cell
On Jan 11, 2008, at 11:56 PM, Nishigandha Naik wrote:
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Dear All,
I am planning to procure High Content Screening system
(HCS). I would like to know experience of users as I
could not find many published reports on different
systems. I am also debating on utility of confocal
(Nipkow disk based) based HCS versus without confocal
HCS. I will be thankful if anybody could share their
experience or opine on the various available makes in
the market.
I am also looking for in vivo imaging system to
procure images from small animals such as mouse, rats
to study tumor formation, metastasis and angeogenesis
of GFP or RFP expressing. I request to share your
experience to enable me to choose the proper system
for these applications.
With thanks and best wishes for the year,
Nishigandha Naik
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