Dear microscopistst,

  unfortunately in my last email I forgot to mention the final costs: Thanks to the College's Equipment Sharing Grant, we are able to offer this course at the discounted rate of £170 per participant, rather than the normal rate of £340!
  And for those concerned with the costs for using a commercial software (£6 per hour after the training), rather than FIJI / ImageJ or other freeware, I have tried to do a rough estimate of the comprehensive costs of microscopy experiments, see attachment. I'm really a big supporter of open source software, and we regularly use and recommend it in FILM, but for challenging image analysis tasks, commercial tools can simply be the better choice: They open up new possibilities, and they can be more efficient, both for time and for money. I have no commercial interest, I simply try to find the best solution for FILM users, and I know how much time and money is often wasted trying to save a few pounds.
 
Good imaging,

Martin

 
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fwd: Definiens training course
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:43:02 +0100
From: film-service <film-service@imperial.ac.uk>
Organisation: Imperial College London / FILM
To: FILM-Users mailing list <film-users@imperial.ac.uk>


Dear microscopists,

 we have now finalised the dates for the Definiens Basic training course, it will take place Tuesday-Thursday 1-3 OCTOBER 2013 in the computer training rooms of the CENTRAL LIBRARY (first floor).
  We have quite a few interests already, but a few more will fit in, so if you want to take advantage of this discounted offer, please register as soon as possible by email to <film-service@imperial.ac.uk> (places are assigned strictly by registration date).

  The Definiens Advanced training course will be organised a bit later, probably around mid-November 2013. If you are interested in that course as well, please also let us know now, because the content of that training will depend on the needs of participants.

Good imaging,

Martin

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Definiens training course
Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 16:42:35 +0100
From: Martin Spitaler <m.spitaler@imperial.ac.uk>
To: FILM-Users mailing list <film-users@imperial.ac.uk>


Dear microscopists,

  I'm very pleased to let you know that we have recently been successful with an application for the College's "equipment sharing grant", and part of of the money will pay towards two training courses for the powerful Definiens Developer XD software, one for beginners and one for advanced users. This will mean that both training courses will be available at a subsidised rate of probably ~£200-300 per participants (rates still need to be finalised, also dependent on the number of participants).

 Many of you have already used the Definiens software for a range of challenging image analysis tasks, from finding vesicles in noisy confocal images to identifying cells in 3D datasets, multi-parameter analysis of muscle fibres to immunological synapses. The power of the software lies in the easy access to a large range of professional image analysis and computer vision tools - with full control of all parameters - and in a dedicated architecture for large-scale batch processing (the largest dataset so far consisted of >30,000 images). It also contains tools for cell tracking, fuzzy logics and machine learning, which might be covered in the advanced course - this will depend on user demand.

  Please let me know if you are interested in attending either of the two training courses. And if you are not sure -  if there is enough interest to learn more about the software, we could use the May FILM Club (31st of May) to give you an overview, based on projects in FILM.

Good imaging,

Martin
PS: other improvements covered by the Equipment Sharing Grant are upgrades to our Widefield 2 microscope (64bit computer to deal with larger data files for live imaging, RGB camera for histological sections) and a new data processing server, which will allow processing of much larger datasets
--
Martin Spitaler, PhD

FILM - Facility for Imaging by Light Microscopy
- Facility Manager -
Sir Alexander Fleming Building, desk 401
Imperial College London / South Kensington
Exhibition Road
London SW7 2AZ
UK

Tel. +44-(0)20-759-42023
E-mail m.spitaler@imperial.ac.uk
Website: http://imperial.ac.uk/imagingfacility