Dec 2 2009
The Evolve™ EMCCD camera from Photometrics®, a designer and manufacturer of high-performance CCD and EMCCD cameras for the life sciences, was ranked fourth among The Scientist's "Top 10 Innovations of 2009."
Photometrics Evolve EMCCD Camera
The Evolve camera could impact imaging experiments in such a way so as to "force all cameras to follow" suit, according to H. Steven Wiley, one of The Scientist's judges and lead biologist at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The Evolve camera makes imaging data quantifiable and reproducible by using the photoelectron to scientifically quantify pixels in an image.
"Just think of the scientific advances we could make if studies were more quantitative and verifiable. And consider the new insights we could derive from being able to integrate data from different experiments," wrote Dr. Jean Y.J. Wang, one of The Scientist's judges and Chair of the Biomedical Science Graduate Program at the University of California, San Diego.
Before the Evolve, scientific-grade CCD and EMCCD cameras provided data in arbitrary imaging units, which derive from gain settings that vary between cameras and over time. Standardizing those arbitrary units between experiments requires a complicated process that few biologists have the time or know-how to do.
According to Deepak Sharma, Ph.D., Senior Product Manager at Photometrics, "Scientific research is often hindered by conflicting data and inconsistent data measurement, which can cause delays, loss of funding and disputable study outcomes."
"The Evolve camera finally gets rid of arbitrary gray levels in favor of photoelectron counts, a meaningful standard that scientists can use for comparing their imaging systems and their image-based data," said Sidney L. Shaw, an Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics of Indiana University.
"Our goal is for scientists to realize the value of the photoelectron and start using it as a unit of measure," said Sharma. Sharma adds, "This level of quantitation for applications such as spinning disk confocal microscopy, Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy, cell trafficking studies, live-cell fluorescent protein imaging, and Single Molecule Fluorescence (SMF) will be invaluable."
The Evolve's reproducibility and quantitation capabilities will also benefit all applications that use imaging systems, from gene sequencing systems to whole animal imaging to super-resolution techniques such as Photo-Activated Localization Microscopy (PALM) and Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM), for which certainty of measurement is essential.
The Scientist's Top 10 Innovations of 2009 can be read at http://bit.ly/2009innovations. Videos, podcasts, and detailed information about Photometrics' Evolve EMCCD Camera are available at http://bit.ly/evolve_emccd and http://bit.ly/photomet.