Need for speed in flow cytometry answered, claims AC
high-speed software system for data analysis/processing in
applications generating large data sets such as laser flow
cytometry.
The software system, Venturi One, is the company's latest software which will run on a 64 bit XP or Windows Vista platform and provide data analysis ten times faster than software run on a 32 bit system.
Applied Cytometry Systems expects significant interest from drug discovery and pharmaceutical companies as it is so much faster than conventional software.
The Venturi One system has been in development for some three years and has taken into account the massive amount of development there has been in the field of flow cytometry.
Flow cytometry relies on being able to rapidly examine and distinguish between different particles in a liquid flow (the technique can examine multiple characteristics of cells including size, complexity, health).
Modern techniques have introduced an increasing number of differently coloured fluorescent labels for cells (there can now be up to 18 different labels) and this means that with high-speed laser cytometry any one analysis will generate a massive quantity of data (forward scattering, side scattering and fluorescence information, which could occupy 10,000 files each of 10 megabytes).
The full analysis will benefit from the use of Venturi One software on a 64 bit platform (quad or dual core) because it is much quicker than previous systems and can handle extremely larger data sets very rapidly.
Tony Burpee, the managing director of Applied Cytometry, is enthusiastic about the speed of data analysis using Venturi One and he commented: "The software system is 80 per cent quicker on a dual core system and 300 per cent quicker on a quad core system; in the near future with eight core and 16 core computers it will be even faster."
The software can provide multicolour analysis in large cell populations and even switch between files from previous studies for comparison during analysis (previous data sets can be viewed instantly by scrolling through thumbnails).
The areas of use include stem cell analysis, oncology, drug discovery and a whole range of other areas in life sciences.
Flow cytometers generate high density data and Venturi One can process the data much more quickly giving the user a much more real time experience in conducting experiments.
The software has been future proofed to some extent because it will run on any Windows platform and runs as fast as the platform will allow by harnessing all of the available processing power.
Tracey Long, marketing manager for Applied Cytometry was keen to point out that the new software can process high density data sets and not necessarily only in flow cytometry.
She said: "the core technology is applicable for any computationally intensive application...
so anybody who generates large amounts of data might find this system applicable."
