A green nerve cell is surrounded by colouful axons and neurites

HCA-Vision measures and classifies the shapes of nerve cells.

HCA-Vision: software for cytomics

HCA-Vision allows researchers to accurately measure cell changes and improve their understanding of biological systems and processes.

  • 25 November 2010 | Updated 12 April 2013

The study of cells, cytomics, reveals a lot of information about how cells work and how they are affected by disease.

Increasingly, researchers are using software to describe and measure cells’ appearance under different conditions.

HCA-Vision is an automated image analysis software package we've developed that rapidly and reproducibly measures functional features of neuronal cells in two-dimensional (2D) images.

We are also working on a three-dimensional (3D) version.

HCA-Vision is a tool to help researchers find more effective, safer pharmaceuticals and better understand the mechanisms of disease.

The software is based on many years of image analysis research.

HCA-Vision delivers measures and statistics that are biologically relevant, in seconds. Manual methods, by contrast, can take days.

It is designed for:

  • researchers in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies conducting target identification/validation, compound screening and pathway analytics
  • neuroscience researchers in universities, research institutes, and hospitals.

What HCA-Vision does

HCA-Vision guides the user in the process of choosing optimal parameters for the automated segmentation of cell structures. It delivers quantitative measures and statistics that are biologically relevant, in seconds.

The modules currently available for HCA-Vision are:

  • HCA-Vision Neurite Analysis Module, which can report rich statistical information on neuronal cell shapes and structures to characterise the branching topology of each neurite tree
  • HCA-Vision Co-culture Analysis Module, which allows users to conduct simultaneous analysis of multiple cell type populations and study how they interact
  • HCA-Vision Subcellular Analysis Module, which can analyse the translocation of proteins between virtually any two cell compartments - the available functions include co-localisation analysis and intensity measurement in different channels or regions of interests in an image
  • HCA-Vision Cell Scoring Module, which can be employed to automatically count the number of cells that express two different proteins levels above user-defined thresholds.

Features

The features of HCA-Vision include:

  • detailed, relevant information about cell morphology
  • optimised for speed, including full batch processing capabilities
  • user-friendly
  • stored parameter profiles for similar assay conditions
  • statistics on a per cell or population level
  • based on .NET technology
  • full database support, including query capabilities to verify biological hypotheses
    exports image and results to a wide range of formats
  • available as a complete stand-alone package or for integration into third-party systems.

Support

We provide users with:

  • extensive on-line help 
  • tutorials on the web 
  • email technical support.

Request a demo version of HCA-Vision using our contact details from the sidebar.

Find out more about the work of CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics & Statistics.

Bischof L, Buckley M, Lagerstrom R, Sun C, Talbot H, Wang D, Vallotton P. 2005. Image Analysis of Neurite Branching: High-Content Screening at High Speed. American Biotechnology Laboratory. September. p. 22.