Problem:
A manufacturer of biological microscopy products asked us to develop both hardware and software components for a system that allows researchers to image and target specific cells of interest for investigating advanced cures for cancer and AIDS.

Solution:
To meet these requirements, Bytes By Design developed a hardware interface utilizing two custom Altera gate arrays and other logic driving our customer's digital masking optical subsystem and a multi-threaded Windows-based application that accepts and displays either an analog or 1394 video feed from a microscope and in turn allows the user to target cells by overlaying masks of a variety of user-drawn shapes. The selected cells may then be photobleached by a variety of laser sources including a large-spot or optical galvo directed pinpoint source.

Results:
Researchers find the new system extremely effective for performing cutting-edge cell targeting at more than two dozen research facilities.