Wednesday, September 23, 2015

MScan 2.2 and MView 3.1 in beta testing.

MScan 2.2 and MView 3.1 are in beta testing at Sutter Instrument.

This release introduces episodic acquisition, a feature available in resonant scanning mode.

MScan 2.2 is now able to simultaneously acquire multiphoton frames with synchronized analog data and video streaming images into stretches called "episodes". Episodic imaging is first armed manually then automatically started by a TTL signal going high. Episodes are stopped automatically either when a pre-set number of imaging frames has been reached or when the TTL signal goes down. Subsequent episodes are re-triggered by the TTL line. Live display of two-photon imaging channels, analog channel voltages and video stream is turned off when episodes are not acquired. In addition, the Pockels cell modulating the ultrafast laser output is set to a minimum between episodes, thus preventing overexposure of the sample during the experiment.


The main advantage of running an experiment using episodic acquisition is to reduce the amount of data to analyze. What makes episodic acquisition unique in MScan is the fact that episodes are sequentially stored in separate "folders" in the same data file. In practice, there is no limitation in the size of each episode, allowing many arbitrarily long bouts of data (i.e., > 4 GB) to be  recorded in one data file. Because the starting time of each episode is written to the file with a 1 ms accuracy, data analysis of discontinuous periods of imaging is greatly facilitated. MView and MCSX have been enhanced to easily handle episodic files.