Contributor: Geoffrey W. Osborne1, Patrick A. Cole2 Affiliation:   Address: 1Flow Cytometry Laboratory, Microscopy Cytometry Resource Facility, 2IT & Communication Unit, John Curtin School of Medical Research, The Australian National University Canberra, ACT, Australia URL: http://jcsmr.anu.edu.au/facslab/facsimile.html email: Geoff.Osborne@anu.edu.au

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Description

Flow cytometry core facilities in institutes which have some teaching responsibilities are faced with unique problems when it comes to educating new users. These problems are characterised by a lack of available instrumentation time to become familiar with the technology, lack of "action and affect" scenerios, limited sample volumes to learn instrument set-up, and the expense involved in preparing samples for purely teaching purposes. In an attempt to address these issues, we have undertaken to develop a virtual flow cytometer. A synopsis of our goals is outlined in the below introductory screen taken from the software.

"It's a simulation! A simulation is a simplified, abstract look at a complicated system, in this case a flow cytometer, that helps you understand some of the important processes that are going on. The great strength of simulations is that you can make changes and adjustments that would be impractical, too expensive, or even impossible to undertake on an instrument.
      The Flow Cytometer Simulator developed here at the John Curtin School of Medical Research is designed to provide a unique learning tool and resource for both students and researchers. Its design as a learning tool is based on the ability to demonstrate important concepts in flow cytometry, such as threshold and compensation, on actual data files which are played or "acquired" on the simulator as one would on a flow cytometer. As a resource, the simulator can display and play any BD flow cytometry standard compliant data file which is representative of a wide variety of cell types, with associated relevant help text. Thus when confronted with an unfamiliar sample, a user can scan, choose and play representative data, and view the instrument settings (and/or staining protocol) used to obtain the data."

The simulator is written in a platform independant programming language, Java, and as such should be compatible with your computing system of choice. The help file associated with the software is standard HTML format and therefore can be easily changed to reflect the needs of an institution, as can the data files which are to be read.
Lastly, the JAVA source code is available at no cost, released under GPL, to allow insitutions to further develop the software to suit their needs. We encourage institutes to contact us for the latest source code. Further development of this application will occur as time permits.