Harvard researchers investigating neurodegenerative diseases and the central nervous system are using a sub-cellular imaging system and image analysis software to overcome traditional bottlenecks
Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair (HCNR) and GE Healthcare have formed a collaboration using a state-of-the-art sub-cellular imaging system, the In Cell 1000.
This GE Healthcare product is now available to all members of the HCNR community and other researchers within the Harvard system across a range of disciplines.
HCNR will also work with GE Healthcare to develop new software applications.
The In Cell systems will primarily be used for HCNR members investigating neurodegenerative diseases and the central nervous system.
GE Healthcare has provided HCNR with a sophisticated software package to accompany the instrument, which includes prepackaged, fully validated analysis routines for rapid analysis of a range of biological processes.
The In Cell Developer Toolbox has also been provided to HCNR members to accommodate applications where the pre-developed analysis routines are not suitable.
Developer Toolbox gives users the flexibility to develop new cellular assay routines from a menu of pre-programmed sub routines.
Simultaneously, HCNR and GE Healthcare are working together to develop the image analysis software.
"Despite the fact that assay development and associated instrumentation have matured to the stage that high throughput, image-based screening is feasible, there is a bottleneck around image analysis," said Stephen Wong, director of the HCNR centre for bioinformatics, and an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School.
"Most scientists still rely upon slow, manual analysis to extract information.
"This new imaging toolkit has the potential to relieve this bottleneck.
"We look forward to investigating new applications and tools to improve our ability to perform high content analyses".
"GE Healthcare is excited to team up with HCNR by providing our technology to further neurodegenerative disease research.
"This is an excellent opportunity for us to collaborate with HCNR to cooperatively develop our imaging analysis software.
"Our strategy is to give researchers more support in data processing and to deliver powerful, flexible analysis algorithms," said Ger Brophy, head of product acquisition and licencing for GE Healthcare discovery systems.
"GE Healthcare is proud to provide tools to help enable the innovative disease research of our partners".
In Cell 1000 is part of GE Healthcare's range for cell-based research and drug discovery, comprising instruments, software, informatics and reagents.
The instrument is fully modular, and is compatible with multiple applications in a variety of formats, including fluorescence and bright field based assays.
Additionally, the instrument has an optional module for microscope slide imaging.
An open architecture enables research scientists to use a variety of automation options and data management tools for integrated and faster discovery.
The In Cell Developer Toolbox allows for a customised analysis workflow that includes a wide range of user-defined parameters, calculations, measures and output formats.
Developer Toolbox expands the current suite of analysis modules for processing images generated by the In Cell analyser 1000 or 3000 cellular imaging platforms.
It retains many of the popular features of the standard In Cell 1000 analysis module such as user-friendly interfaces, protection and/or sharing of protocols, batch analysis, and no need for specialist programming skills or scripting.
