Advice about the Acumen Explorer

[Joe Trask]

Dear All,

I have a colleague who is interested in purchasing the Acumen Explorer
for high throughput HCS. The application is straightforward and they
have determined it provides the same results as widefield HC Imagers.
Although I have previously evaluated the system and have my own
opinions I wish to engage this user’s forum of experts to find out
what experiences (good and bad) they have encountered with Acumen.
Any advice I can pass along is appreciated. If you wish not to
respond to the entire group then feel free to send me a private note
at tr...@neuro.duke.edu

Buying an HC Imager is like buying a car, you do not know what you
have until you get behind the drivers seat (that is the test run).
Then it takes time to determine the "true" performance, how to operate
everything, and required maintenance (this is what we are stuck with,
hopeful it delivers).

Thanks.
Joe Trask

[HTS-Central Drug Research Institute]

It all depends on your applications.... If you can elaborate a bit on
current and future applications you wish to run on platform, community
would be able to let you know their thoughts.

[Joe Trask]

Thanks, that is a relevant question, I was quite vague in the initial
question.
Potential HT applications on the Acumen and lets add the MDC IsoCyte
(as an alternative competitor) include phenotypic screening assays of
culture mammalian cells or possibly zebrafish or other organisms
challenged with RNAi or small molecule compounds. Assays may include
cell cycle, protein redistribution, or undefined morphological
features as provided by the optical resolution of the system. In
addition, it would be interesting to hear folk’s thoughts on
reliability of the system, any flaws in detection or optics, customer
support (which could be dependent on location), data analysis, data
management, etc.

If folks could give a grade score (A,B,C,D,F) of the following
components of the system that would be useful. 1)Company; 2)System
Hardware; 3)System Software - GUI; 4)Image & Data Analysis; 5)Data
Management; 6)Connectivity to 3rd party software packages, API, export
features, etc; 7)Usefulness of Service Contracts; 8)Customer
Service.

Again this is a forum to let users know without vendor bias what users
are experiencing - good and bad. Regardless of the responses this
should provide genuine feedback to both the end users and the
vendors. Thanks!


On Mar 2, 5:16 am, HTS-Central Drug Research Institute