I am pleased to announce that the Macintosh-based FACS data analysis program that we developed here at Stanford is now available to everyone! The program, "FlowJo", is based on an entirely new paradigm of data analysis and presentation, drawing in part on the long history of advanced techniques developed in the Herzenberg laboratory over the past 30 years. The fundamental basis of the program was presented at a poster session at ISAC in Rimini last year. I fimly believe that FlowJo will have a lasting and positive impact on how flow cytometry data is analyzed and presented. The major advantage of this program is its novel approach to batch analysis: no more "keyboard macros"! Rather, it uses an intuitive click-and-drag approach. FlowJo presents an environment to you that is akin to a laboratory notebook: it saves all of the analyses (gatings and statistics that you do) in a "workspace document". When you load subsequent experiments, you can specify that all of the gating, graphs, and statistics that you have already performed should be applied automatically--saving enormous amounts of time. FlowJo has many graph types, including "Probability Contour" plots, using the optimal contouring algorithm (which has been incorrectly implemented in other software packages). In addition, FlowJo allows you to perform software compensation, export gated data for analysis by other programs... Creating publication quality graphics is a snap: you can easily copy simple or complex graphical layous, or tables of statistics, into drawing programs or spreadsheets. For more information on how to download this program, visit the web site "http://www.treestar.com/flowjo/". (Stanford, which is a great place for developing new software but not necessarily for supporting it, has licensed FlowJo to TreeStar, a local company committed to continued support and development). A fully functional version of the program can be downloaded for free. (And yes, it reads data files from ALL manufacturers, as long it is in FCS format!) At this site listed above, you can also download or view a tutorial that will show you how powerful this program is. mr
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