From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,ffe4fb1477fe67e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!y5g2000hsa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: ezkcdude Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Newbie Needs Ada Advice Date: 8 May 2007 14:27:20 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1178659640.093325.10510@y5g2000hsa.googlegroups.com> References: <1178212418.538270.283700@c35g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <1178635220.859690.3310@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> <5abtplF2n3855U1@mid.individual.net> <1178650313.462774.91850@e51g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 169.147.3.25 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1178659644 3556 127.0.0.1 (8 May 2007 21:27:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 21:27:24 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: y5g2000hsa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=169.147.3.25; posting-account=UbN39Q0AAADjt_3dTnzY1z4Qc9xnXw4K Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:15663 Date: 2007-05-08T14:27:20-07:00 List-Id: On May 8, 4:21 pm, Markus E Leypold wrote: > ezkcdude writes: > > All helpful responses. Thanks. One idea that now makes some sense > > (having thought about it for all of a couple of hours), is that the > > GUI/interface could be a separate application that simply sets up the > > experiment (i.e. microscope configuration). For example, creating an > > XML document with appropriate hardware parameters, and then feeding > > this document to the "engine", which actually controls the microscope. > > Don't use XML for that. Overkill. Just plain old tagged data lines > > param1 2342.2423 > param2 32423.234 > > or even a 1-line per call > > CALL function_name 1212 123123 123 1112 > > will suffice and be more readable. Imap uses lispish lists as interface. > > Regards -- Markus Well, maybe if I explain the experiment better, it will make more sense, why I can't do this so simply. Basically, we do time-lapse imaging of several (living) specimens (usually quail embryos, but could also be cell culture) over the course of a few hours to days. For each specimen, there are several illumination modes (brightfield + 1 or more fluorescence channels). On top of that the microscope stage is moved to several overlapping "tiles" for each specimen, so a widefield montage can be later stitched together in post-processing. Finally, we capture several slices in the z-direction, which can be collapsed according to a focus score (sort of like an auto-focus routine). Again, that can be done in post-processing. Anyway, to illustrate, here is a typical example: Experiment: 6 embryos 2x4 tiles 7 z-planes 3 illumination modes 12 minutes/frame (5 frames/h) Each grayscale image that is acquired is about 635K, so for one 12- hour experiment, we're acquiring 6*8*7*3*5*12*635K~38GB! And I need to mention that the embryos do not simply stay put, they can move around enough that periodic adjustments to the microscope must be made. That is why it is so important to have some graphical feedback. I must be able to make sure the embyro is positioned correctly, and this will obviously vary from embryo-to-embryo and between experiments. Well, if that still sounds easy to you...