13^th May 2004 Cambridge, UK: Synbiosis, a world-leading manufacturer of automated microbiological systems is pleased to introduce its new ProtoCOL colour cell and colony counting software. Designed to automatically enumerate cells or colonies in images generated by a microscope, ProtoCOL software will save microscopists valuable time and provide better count precision.

The simple to use ProtoCOL software can be loaded onto any laboratory PC and will work with BMP, TIFF or JPEG image files captured by any microscope. The versatile software can perform colony or cell counts in less than one second and the GLP compliant results generated are instantly transferred to PC. These features will help improve accuracy, as well as increase laboratory productivity.

The ProtoCOL software has exceptional colour recognition capabilities, which can simultaneously enumerate different coloured features from the same image. This application is ideal for microscopists wanting to save time and improve accuracy when counting cells stained with several types of fluorescent dyes, for example.

To test whether the software will suit a specific application, users can send an image on CD or disk to Synbiosis or email it to sales@synbiosis.com. Synbiosis will analyse the image with the ProtoCOL software and rapidly forward a report of the results.

Simon Johns, Divisional Manager for Synbiosis said: “We are delighted to introduce this excellent software, which comes as standard with our market leading ProtoCOL colony counters. The ProtoCOL software will benefit microscopists by freeing them from the repetitive and error prone tasks of manual counting and data input. We already know it performs well with a range of cell and colony counting applications and are looking forward to processing any images customers send.”

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