Imaging and microscopy suite software and hardware upgrades

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We request $40468.50 in funds to upgrade the software and computer associated with two heavily used microscopes. The existing equipment includes a low-magnification stereo florescent dissecting microscope, and a high-magnification florescent compound microscope. The microscopes are both outfitted with dedicated cameras. Both cameras are run through a shared Mac G4 computer running Openlab software Version 3. The microscopes and its associated camera, computer and software were purchased over a number of years (1996, 1999 and 2000) for a total of over $171,000. Since then both microscopes, along with the associated computer and software, have been used by many faculty, research staff, graduate and undergraduate students alike in pursuit of their research projects. The existing microscopes are excellent. The dissecting microscope optics are ideal for photography of a variety of embryos, including frog, fish, fly, and plants. The compound scope is ideal due to its excellent optics. Tying the microscopes and the camera together is the Openlab software - a powerful and yet user friendly element. HOWEVER, the Openlab software and Mac computer on which is runs are both dated and problematic. The computer is old and running at less than optimal speeds and capabilities. While essential and heavily used, the current software and computer configuration are limiting use. An upgrade to the computer and software of this microscope suite would increase functionality and productivity, and as such is warranted. We here request funds to upgrade the hardware and camera for the stereo scope, the existing computer and imaging software, such that the existing microscopes may still be used. This upgrade is cost effective, as this request is only a fraction of the cost that the system was to establish. The new computer will be state of the art and provide the optimum speed and memory resources that are required by modern imaging software. In addition the simple and yet powerful Openlab software, which is familiar to the users, is simply being updates to a current version (5.5.1). The transition to the update should be seamless, and will quickly and beneficially impact existing users research programs.