CHALFONT ST GILES, UK, August 25, 2005 - GE Healthcare has announced the availability of the new ImageMaster 2D Platinum Version 6.0 and ImageMaster 2D Platinum Version 6.0 DIGE, two powerful software tools for proteomics researchers that are ideally suited for a full range of 2-D gel experiments, from very simple to the most extended 2-D analysis.

Designed in collaboration with The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and GeneBio, the ImageMaster 2D Platinum suite of software tools captures data from an acquisition device such as a scanner or camera and accelerates gel analysis by locating spots, assigning molecular weights, and calculating the volume of each spot, normalizing quantities to other spots on the gel. The software is also able to match spot positions between an unlimited number of gels, browse external databases to extract relevant information, and create results reports in a variety of formats, from paper documents to Web pages. Using ImageMaster's sophisticated computational tools, users can distinguish between different classes of samples and identify spots of interest for subsequent picking and mass spec identification.

ImageMaster 2D Platinum DIGE extends the benefits of this powerful analytical software to 2-D DIGE experiments, eliminating gel-to-gel variation and improving accuracy by enabling the use of an internal standard.

"By allowing researchers to use pre-labeled, multiplexed samples and to incorporate an internal standard, Version 6.0 of ImageMaster enables users to take full advantage of the benefits of the Ettan TM 2-D DIGE system," says Kumar Bala, Global Marketing Manager. "Innovative new algorithms enhance comparison accuracy and enable expanded parallel processing of samples."

A single ImageMaster file contains an image, spots, and related data, facilitating complete traceability of all operations performed on the image. ImageMaster is able to create synthetic gels that display averaged spot positions, shapes, and intensities.


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