Columbus FAQ's

What is the difference between Columbus Conductor and Columbus Gallery?

Columbus Gallery provides image and meta data management for high content and microscopy images.
Columbus Conductor has all the features of Columbus Gallery plus a very comprehensive image analysis.

How many users can work simultaneously on Columbus?

Effectively there is no limitation on the number of users that can simultaneously connect to Columbus.  Only the Columbus system performance (16 Core Conductor, 4 Core Gallery) may limit the usability of the system when the number of simultaneous connections becomes very high.

Is the usage of Columbus limited to a certain period of time?

No, the usage of the Columbus Server and Client Software in the current release is perpetual. 

Does Perkin Elmer provide service and maintenance?

Yes, Perkin Elmer provides a Software Maintenance Agreement (SMA) for Columbus that includes free upgrades to all new releases.

What are the hardware specifications of a Columbus Conductor System?

The Columbus Conductor comes with a server and a SAS storage unit:

The Server is equipped with 4 x 4 Core CPU’s and 32 GB RAM.

The Storage unit starts with 3TB and is upgradeable to 24TB.

Which image formats are supported by Columbus?

Columbus supports the Bioformats (http://loci.wisc.edu/software/bio-formats)
In addition, various High Content Screening image reader formats are supported;

• PerkinElmer® Opera™ QEHS, TEHS, LX
• PerkinElmer® Operetta™
• Thermo Scientific® ArrayScan®
• MDS Discovery -1
• GE® INCell1000, INCell2000, INCell3000(XCDE)

If you can’t find your image reader or microscope listed please contact us.  

Can I perform analysis on images taken with non-PerkinElmer instruments?

With Columbus Conductor 2.1 you can analysis all your images regardless of the origin with Acapella™ and the Acapella Assay Language.

How fast is the analysis of a 384 well plate?

The time taken to analyze a 384 well plate depends on various factors. A 384 well plate measured with an Opera QEHS with 2 fields per well and 2 channels per field (2x2 binning) can be analyzed with a translocation script in less than 30 minutes.

How do I extract images, metadata and results from Columbus?

There are multiple ways to extract data from Columbus. You can export images in batches as single or multi image TIFF and results can be exported as Excel compatible csv or html files. Various third party software vendors provide interfaces to Columbus to pull images, metadata and results out of the database (e.g. Accelrys® PipelinePilot, IDBS ActivityBase, ImageJ and MathLab).

Which operating system is used for the Columbus Server?

The Columbus Server is installed on Linux operating system. It is currently optimized for OpenSuse 11.2.

Is Columbus compatible with OME?

Columbus is based on OMERO, a development of the Open Microscopy Environment (OME), so it is fully compatible with OME.