Mayachitra imago
Bioimage management and analysis software

A new beta build of Mayachitra imago 1.0 (Beta 3 Build 90909) is now available). This version features a better and more accurate registration/mosaicking tool.

New features:

• imago introduces a better and more accurate registration/mosaicking tools. imago’s new registration tool is simple to use and fully automatic. It arranges images and estimates the optimal parameters for selected images in automatic manner. All you need to do is to select images from imago’s album viewer. The registration tool features fast and effective blending and robust registration of images with different scales (up to 400%).
• imago now provides a pseudo color visualization. Collecting an arbitrary number of channels (e.g. 2 or 4 channels) from a tissue has become a common task. Now you can assign a color to each channel using imago’s pseudo-color lookup table.
• imago offers export function for your analysis result. With a single click, you can save the analysis result as a comma-separated values format (.CSV) so you can do further analysis with Numbers or Microsoft Excel.
• Hand tool (panning tool) is added to the image viewer. You don’t need a scroll bar anymore. With a hand tool, you can easily move an image within a window.
• imago has its own theme. imago can provide you a consistent appearance regardless of your Windows’ theme color.

Bugfixes:

• Loads only thumbnails that are visible which makes imago more responsive to user interaction.
• Fixed bug on z-frame projection. imago preserves number of channels and pseudo colors selected by an user in projected image
• Enhanced a multi-channel image visualization. For example, in the case of 2-channel image, each channel is set to magenta and green.
• Improved the performance of computing histogram of an image.

Known issues:

• Currently imago resized a large image (e.g. larger than 2048 x 2048 pixels) for efficient display. Note that we keep its original image and the link between two.
• For image format search, format list shows description of the format but not the file extension (e.g. Olympus Fluoview). For more intuitive format search, file extension will be added in the format search list.
• For search panel, there is an expander for each search category which contains search items. Different search categories can be combined (e.g. metadata and analysis results) to narrow down search results but the expander can be still closed even though one of the search conditions in the expander is checked. To fix this, search condition summary will be added to clarify the current search result.
• Content-based search is not combined with other text-based search (metadata, annotation, image name and etc). They will be combined for a better search experience.
• When the number of a graphical annotation within an image is increased dramatically (e.g. 50,000 cells), mouse response becomes slow.

A new beta build of Mayachitra imago1.0 (Beta 3 Build 90706) is now available! Again, you can download this beta build for free! Here are new features added in this build:

New features:

• imago now provides a wider image view. Since imago shows an image, analysis tool and metadata in one layout, it can be hard to see an entire image especially for users with a low screen resolution. Now you can hide all tool/info panels and save more space for an image view.
• Cell counting operation is faster. When an image size is big, it took a relatively long time to perform cell counting in the previous version. Now, with a mask annotation, cell counting becomes faster and provides more accurate results.
• imago offers a better way to display the analysis results; a history window for image analysis results. You can apply imago’s analysis tools to multiple channels and multiple slices within a stack. Now imago keeps the history of cell counting and cell analysis.
• Cancel buttons are added to many functions including importing/deleting images, bitmap effect, image registration, cell counting, and cell analysis. If you accidentally start any operations with the wrong images, you can simply cancel it without wasting your time.
• Uninstaller is included in the application menu. In order to update your installation, any old versions of Mayachitra imago need to be uninstalled first. We wanted to make it more convenient for you. From now on, you can simply click the “Uninstall” menu instead of manually uninstalling it through “Add or Remove Programs” application.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed problem with level adjusting tool in Effects control which didn’t show a vertical bar in the histogram when the histogram is updated.
• For ‘Make Binary’ tool in Effects control, preview and actual results are now synchronized.
• Fixed problem on cell counting wizard, holding mouse button didn’t draw cell circle properly.
• Fixed problem on cell analysis tool, preview thresholding was not updated properly.
• Help button opens new help dialog only when current dialog is closed. If current dialog is opened, it activates the current dialog.
• Default color list for cell counting result is improved to visualize result properly.
• Removed unnecessary format checking for standard image format (jpeg, bmp, png, gif) to reduce the image ingestion time.
• Added a preprocessing module to the image registration so it can create a correct mosaic for single frame, multi-page image.

Known issues:

• Now imago blocks image registration for multi-frame images. To do this, now the user needs to either project the multi-frame image first or  extract the specific frame.
• For image format search, format list shows description of the format but not the file extension (e. g. Olympus Fluoview). For more intuitive format search, file extension will be added in the format search list.
• For search panel, there is an expander for each search category which contains search items. Different search categories can be combined (e.g. metadata and analysis results) to narrow down search results but the expander can be still closed even though one of the search conditions in the expander is checked. To fix this, search condition summary will be added to clarify the current search result.
• Content-based search is not combined with other text-based search (metadata, annotation, image name and etc). They will be combined for a better search experience.

We have been planning to release the updated version of imago 1.0 Beta 3 on July 1st. We want to share some information on the progress we have been making to the first update to imago 1.0 Beta 3.

• Uninstaller is included in the application menu. In order to update your installation, any old versions of Mayachitra imago need to be uninstalled first. We wanted to make it more convenient for you. Now you can simply click the “Uninstall” menu instead of manually uninstalling it through “Add or Remove Programs” application.
• Better way to display the analysis results. We have been thinking about a better way to summarize the cell counting results. You can apply imago’s cell counting tool to multiple channels and multiple slices within a stack. We are currently working on keeping the summary of image analysis (cell counting and cell segmentation tool) so you can directly access your result image as well as quantitative results.
• Automatic mosaicking (stitching) method better suited for microscopic images. We recently start working on a mosaicking method with a new projection model to produce better results for microscopic images.

Today, we are releasing Mayachitra imago 1.0 Beta 3. imago 1.0 Beta 3 includes new bio-format library to support more 5-D image formats including Bio-Rad PIC, Image-Pro Workspace, Leica LCS LEI, Olympus FluoView FV1000, and Zeiss LSM.

New and enhanced features include

• Support more 16-bit 5-D image file formats.
• Added a navigation bar: easy to view previous/next image in the same album.
• Added a zoom navigation window: display an image in a small window and easy to reposition the enlarged area that you want to view.
• Image adjustment tools (e.g. median filtering and adaptive thresholding) are added.
• Publication tag is added: tag your images with publication information.
• Graphical annotation tool is now applicable to z-/t- stacks.
• Added a function to create a projection image of z-series.

Try out new Mayachitra imago and participate in testing and building easy to use software!