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Dear Confocalists,

For many reasons it seemed to me a good idea to create an image explorer 
program (like Windows Explorer) that would allow you to see thumbnail images 
of proprietary confocal file formats, in addition to standard image file formats.  
I suggested the idea to one of our Bioinformtics guys and he's written a 
program which he's called FocalPoint.  At this point you may well tell me this is 
reinventing the wheel, but to date, I haven't seen anything quite like this.

The program displays thumbnail images of Zeiss (.lsm) and Olympus (.oib, .oif) 
confocal images files in addition to standard image file formats (avi, jpg, tiff, 
bmp, png).  If the image file contains multiple channels or images acquired 
over depth or time then slider bars appear adjacent to the thumbnail image 
and allow you to navigate through the stack.  You can also easily resize the 
thumbnail images to allow you to see more or less detail as required.

If there are people out there who think they may benefit from this software 
then it can be freely downloaded here (PC and Mac):
http://www.bioinformatics.bbsrc.ac.uk/projects/focalpoint/

At the moment the software is still work in progress so there may be one or 
two bugs.  Let me know if you find anything.  I'd also be interested to hear if 
anyone has any suggestions on how the software could be improved.  
Currently there is support only for Zeiss and Olympus confocal file formats as 
these are the instruments we have here.  If anyone would like support added 
for other common confocal file formats (eg .lei) then perhaps you could send 
me a few small sample files and we'll see what we can do.

Simon Walker
Babraham Institute
Cambridge
UK
CB22 3AT