Visikol has been a leader in advanced bioimaging through its portfolio of cutting-edge technologies and innovative drug discovery, bioimaging, and histopathology services. Visikol is focused on transforming tissues into actionable insights that allow researchers to make informed decisions and accelerate their research programs.
The company is model and disease agnostic and has a team of experts with extensive project experience in drug screening, preclinical and clinical research including liver disease, immunology and immuno-oncology, toxicology, cancer, and neuroscience. Visikol offers a suite of tissue imaging and bioassay services that include, light sheet microscopy, high content screening, confocal microscopy, fluorescent and brightfield slide scanning, imaging mass cytometry and multiplex immunohistochemistry services.
Through these imaging services, Visikol generates a substantial amount of data and it is often challenging to share this data with Clients due to its size (multi-gigabyte) and a lack of computing power and appropriate software to visualize the datasets. This is especially the case for multiplex immunofluorescent data sets which most off-the-shelf software and personal computers are not optimized to handle.
To address these problems, Visikol has developed its BitSlide cloud sharing platform which provides researchers the ability to easily visualize brightfield or fluorescent whole-slide images within a web-browser, avoiding the need to download multi-gigabyte files. The need for BitSlide became even more acute during COVID19 as many researchers started working from home without the use of high-bandwidth internet connections, core computers with adequate memory, and proprietary imaging software. Uniquely, the BitSlide platform enables interactive visualization of multiplex immunohistochemistry whole-slide images, which require overlay of 10-20 image channels simultaneously, and previously required specialized software and computing power to access. With BitSlide, researchers can instantly load large multi-channel image datasets, pan and zoom at full resolution, adjust contrast, adjust color channels for individual markers, take measurements and annotations.
Currently, the BitSlide platform is being used throughout Visikol service projects such that its communication with Clients is more efficient and results can easily be shared as a project progresses. Clients can also easily annotate slides for use in building artificial intelligence models or for simply highlighting features of interest to discuss.
“We built this software platform to really address a key bottleneck in delivering multiplex immunohistochemistry whole-slide imaging data to our Clients in a way that is easy to use and does not require specialized software tools. We have already received very positive feedback from our Clients in pharma and medical research on its ease-of-use and quality,” noted CSO Tom Villani, PhD.
BitSlide™ is hosted securely through Amazon Web Services (AWS), where data is redundantly backed-up, encrypted, and securely housed for indefinite storage. Visikol shares Client data with a secure access portal which is only available to the Client, who can then subsequently choose to share it via hyperlink with other collaborators. BitSlide is compatible with any device including tablets and smartphones. Visikol also offers BitSlide as a hosted solution to organizations with large quantities of digital histology images, such as universities and hospitals.
Reach out to us today to learn how Visikol’s imaging services can help turn your images into insights.