During my company sales meeting I had the opportunity to receive training on Imaris Bitplane, which we are now able to sell in our dealership territory. I’ve come across this software package off an on over many years, and have always wanted to get under the hood and check it out. Below is an example of what the software can do. In this case the program identified neuronal processes, as well as tagged nodes for 3-D analysis.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ng8FDIj7fw
The software fits the needs of a very specific market. I would suggest looking at this software only if you already own or are buying a confocal of some type, or have a very good familiarity with deconvolving images. You would also have a need to visualize 3-D interactions or structures which occur on a larger scale than that of your axial resolution limit, and/’or have a need to measure volumetric objects either in a single data stack, or in a timelapse.
Software like this has an advantage over standard imaging software in that it is specifically targeted to do one thing and do it well. With general-use imaging products, the developers and support engineers are spread thin writing code to do everything from image analysis in 2-D, to device driver updates, to archive connections, boutique analysis protocols (i.e. FRET), image processing filters and so forth. The advantage of a specifically targeted product is that the engineers can concentrate on making the key jobs of the software work as well as possible, and because it has a targeted application, the interface can be built around a known user workflow. In this case Bitplane does extremely well with measuring and visualizing anything in 3-D, and has a very powerful 2-D/3-D tracking capability.
As with all new technologies I’m exposed to, this tool looks great – but I haven’t learned it’s limits by working on real world data. In an effort to discover where this software fits, I’d like end-users to provide some data sets with requests for analysis from the data, so I can both learn and test this software. The upside for users is that they get to find out if this tool might help them, simply by uploading a stack. You can also get a cool 3-D movie like the one above to show off at the next lab meeting 🙂
If you’re interested in finding out what this tool can do, and you have some data handy, please place a comment below, and I’ll email you my FTP upload information. I’m quite curious to see how this software stands up to some real world challenges.
-Austin
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