Dear Mary,
it seems that Zeiss has a standalone PC-based 3D analysis station (a step up from the 3D module of the Zeiss LSM program). I have used it a bit and seems quite nice and easy. I myself have stick with the Unix-based programs for flexibility. I suggested that you check out the Zeiss station because you last mentioned that you want to get the Zeiss LSM. When I use several programs which either read variations of the TIFF or simply handle only gray scale images, I needed to do some file conversion. Whereas the Zeiss system obivously can handle their version of the TIFF naturally. The issue is cost which might not be a concern for you.
Regards,
Hanry.

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From:   Mary Teruel, Dept. of Cell Biology DUMC[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Reply To:       Confocal Microscopy List
Sent:   Wednesday, August 27, 1997 12:14 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        3D imaging software?

Sorry if this is a repeat message. The listserver came back with errors when I sent this the first time so I'm not sure if it has already been posted.

Hi - Does anyone have recommendations for a good 3D imaging software package that can run on a Pentium based system? We would like to be able to manipulate stacks of 2D images (say 100-200 images at 1024 x 1024 resolution). We would like to use the software package to make some 3D measurements, but we are most interested in that it gives good 3D renderings of the data. As added features, it would nice to be able to do full rotations amd stereo pairs.
     We have not purchased the Pentium system yet, and so we are open to getting a motherboard with dual or quad processors - or to getting accelerator cards.
     Does anyone have any comments on the Visilog program (from Noesis up in Canada)? It looks like a nice program, and it also can run with a Matrox accelerator card to really speed it up. However, they said their 3D software isn't "voxel" yet. Is this a problem?
    Thanks very much for any input!

                  Mary Teruel
                  Dept. of Cell Biology
                  Duke University Medical Center