Image Acquisition & Analysis

CDAS’s wide array of imaging technologies automates not only the acquisition of the images but also the data analysis and interpretation of the images using powerful segmentation and analysis software. This will increase the throughput and reproducibility of the measurements and provide unbiased statistically relevant results.

Vectra™ is a Caliper’s proprietary multispectral imaging instrument and the most advanced imaging instrument that accurately and quantitatively measures protein expression and morphometric characteristics in intact tissue sections, in distinct tissue regions of interest, on whole slides, or in TMAs.

The system is well-suited to IF labels, to IHC stains, and to conventional dyes. Using Vectra, single or multiple proteins can be measured all at the same time and in the same tissue section on a per-tissue, per-cell, and per-cell-compartment (eg. nuclear, cytoplasmic, membrane) basis.

Vectra performs automated image acquisition and is powered by the inForm™ software which enables Vectra to automate quantitative data extraction/analysis on up to 200 slides in a single batch run.

inForm is the Caliper’s proprietary automated image analysis software that is used for accurate quantitation of single or multiple markers in cells and tissues. This software is capable of quantitatively separating out overlapping dyes/label signals from one another and from autofluorescence. inForm includes powerful tissue segmentation algorithms and can be trained through a simple learn-by-example interface, teaching the software to identify and segment tissue areas of interest or objects automatically. Once trained, inForm automatically locates and analyzes user-specified regions and provides per-tissue, per-cell and per-cell-compartment multiparameter data.

inForm scoring and quantification positive cells within region of interest can provide us with data on mean pixel intensity of biomarker expression, area of tissue category, percentage of positive cells and number of cells.