Date: Wed Nov 17 2004 - 22:37:05 EST
Hi Joanna,
While this may not be in my best interests, I should point out that we are certainly not the only ones who can do post-acquisition compensation on FCS 2.0 files, although in my humble opinion, we do so quite nicely.
The question really is, what is the resolution of your data (I cannot remember offhand what the resolution of the Elite is). Is the data stored in Log or Linear? Whilst FCS Express (and others) can perform the actual math on lower resolution data, and do the log to linear conversion for you; digitization errors, non-linearity of your log amps and other artifacts may affect the accuracy of your results.
As for the depth of the programming skills required to convert FCS files from 2.0 to 3.0, just get anyone with a first year computer science degree to change the 5th byte of the lmd from a "2" to a "3" without distorting anything else. We can do it for you, but the huge amount of effort required will cost you a beer next time I happen to be in Luxembourg. :-)
-Dave
-----------------------------------------
David Novo
President
De Novo Software
dave@denovosoftware.com
www.denovosoftware.com
phone: (310) 558-4955
fax: (310) 943-1489
Wednesday, November 17, 2004, 2:43:51 AM, you wrote:
> Greetings,
> Our Coulter Epics Elite flow cytometer outputs FCS 2.0 LMD files. We would
> like to buy new software to be able to do serious post-acquisition analysis
> on a separate computer. We thought about buying CxP 2.0 from Beckman Coulter
> as it seems to have quite a lot of interesting features. Unfortunately,
> while it opens FCS 2.0 files, it only allows post-acquisition compensation
> on FCS 3.0 files.
> Is there any GPL / Freeware / Shareware utility that would (batch!?) convert
> our acquired FCS 2.0 files to FCS 3.0 format? I took a quick peek at the 3.0
> format definition and it doesn't seem too complicated, and I'm wondering if
> a brave soul with a wee bit more programmatic experience than me already
> wrote that kind of utility.
> We thought about buying FCS Express (DeNovo Software) as it does offline
> compensation on FCS 2.0 files. What are your impressions on FCS Express?
> Best wishes,
> Joana Macedo
> Laboratoire National de Santé - Institute of Immunology
> WHO Collaborating Centre for Measles
> 20A, rue Auguste Lumière
> L-1950 Luxembourg
> email : Joana.Macedo@LNS.ETAT.LU
> URL : http://www.etat.lu/LNS
