RE: CellQuest data files

Eric Martz (emartz@microbio.umass.edu)
Fri, 27 Oct 1995 11:34:04 -0500 (EST)

My free program MFI (PC/Windows only) reads CellQuest (FACStation 1.0)
listmode files, will convert them to ASCII (readable by spreadsheets),
will also create a new ratio parameter, then export the resulting
data file including the ratio to ASCII, etc. etc. MFI will also do dot
plots of ratio vs. time and draw the median kinetic line. WinMDI is less
capable for kinetics and has no ratio capability. However, MFI cannot
do polygonal gates (it does only rectangular) and cannot mark arbitrary
regions of histograms for medians or do quadrants. So if you need these
features, you can use MFI to create the ratio (it has good adjustable
normalization built in), export to ASCII, convert the ASCII to FCS (e.g.
with my A2FCS program), then use WinMDI to do whatever MFI won't do. (If
there has been a new release of CellQuest which MFI can't read properly,
just let me know and I'll fix it as soon as I can.) GET THE BETA TEST
VERSION OF MFI TO DO RATIOS! It is in beta.dir. The only reason I haven't
made it a full release yet is lack of time; I don't know of any serious
bugs. The new features are however not yet in the on-line documentation,
but the accompanying text document describes them.

A comprehensive, international catalog of free flow cytometry software is
available via World Wide Web (using a Web browser such as Mosaic, Netscape,
or Lynx) at http://www.bio.umass.edu/mcbfacs/flowcat.html.

WinMDI (for PC Windows) is the preeminant free general purpose flow
cytometry program. It is quite excellent and does almost everything
you might want except DNA cell cycle analysis (and its capabilities
for time kinetics are limited). It does multiple colored gates and 3D
plots. Get it from the catalog above, or from the original source,
http://facs.scripps.edu, or by anonymous ftp, also from
facs.scripps.edu in /pub/pc.

MFI (for DOS) is available thru the above web catalog, or by anonymous
ftp from flowcyt.bio.umass.edu in /pub/flowcyt/mfi. (When a beta-test
version with new features is available, it is in
/pub/flowcyt/mfi/beta.dir.) MFI is especially good for processing
large numbers of files quickly, for time kinetics (including
calculating a ratio and drawing the line graph), and for
spreadsheet-ready ASCII conversions. It has a detailed tutorial with
sample data. MFI does neither quadrant analysis nor DNA cell-cycle
analysis.

More details are available in the catalog on these and other free programs.

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Eric Martz, Professor of Immunology emartz@microbio.umass.edu
Dept Microbiology Voice: 413-545-2325 FAX: 413-545-1578
Morrill IVN 203, Box 35720, Univ Massachusetts, Amherst MA 01003-5720
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