November 13th, 2018 — Cambridge, MA, USA — Fixstars Solutions Inc., a global leader in
providing multi-core
CPU/GPU/FPGA acceleration technology, announced today that it has released a software package for the
Expansion Microscopy project which will be called “Expansion Microscopy Studio (ExM Studio)”. The software
is free to use and is now available on their website: www.exm.studio 
.
Fixstars will be accepting orders for “ExM ready” workstations/servers which will come preconfigured with
ExM Studio — also available on their website.
Expansion microscopy (ExM) is a method invented by Professor Ed Boyden (MIT) for improving the resolution of light microscopy by physically expanding biological samples. It allows investigators to identify small structures in 3-D and with a nano-scale resolution by expanding them with a polymer system [1]. In ExM, first a specimen is enlarged, then images are captured many times to cover the entire specimen with a small FOV of a microscope. As a result, you need to integrate and stitch a large number of high-resolution image files in order to get a full 3D picture. The selection of proper applications/tools to realize this is not an easy task. Moreover, the processing time from beginning to end can take several dozen hours.
Fixstars has developed a GPU/SSD accelerated image processing software for ExM over the past two years. The goal of “ExM Studio” is to provide an easy to use, high-performance tool to process a large number of image data for a life science researcher. The first version of ExM Studio has the world fastest deconvolution software that is an essential tool — not only for ExM — but also for general light-sheet microscopy. Fixstars accelerated the deconvolution process by utilizing NVIDIA GPUs and was able to achieve a speed of 54 times faster than other well-known software [2].
This is an initial release of ExM Studio. Fixstars plans to release a second version that has more feature early next year. We will keep supporting life science researchers to explore the inside of cells and all other of life's building blocks.
Technical Reference:
1. Fei Chen, Paul W. Tillberg, and Edward S. Boyden (2015), “Expansion microscopy”, Science.
347 (6221): 543–548.
2. Fixstars internal evaluation result. Visit www.exm.studio for more detail.
About Fixstars Solutions, Inc.
Fixstars is devoted to "Speed up your Business".
Combining our expertise in multi-core processor programming and the use of next-generation memory
technology, we provide the best performance solutions, as well as power savings to accelerate customers'
businesses in various fields.
