MBF Bioscience Solves Your Big Data Challenges
The ability to efficiently acquire large experimental data sets of 2D, 3D and 4D images is advancing rapidly across science. Tools
Biolucida®for Research
Manage big image dataProduct Overview
Biolucida is a hub for 2D and 3D big image data. It stores all of your 2D and 3D image data and metadata in a secure, permanent location accessible via the web. Images can be acquired with slide scanners or microscope systems, and can be any size – Biolucida is built to store, organize, and serve huge image collections. The possibilities are endless with Biolucida: share images with collaborators, include large image sets from published papers, contribute standardized data to public image data repositories, or analyze images on any computer with Neurolucida 360, Stereo Investigator, BrainMaker. You will always have control over your images and access to them.
Key Benefits
- Robust, high-performance slide viewing for large and small images – Whether you have 10 studies or 200 studies, Biolucida can instantly serve your images and standardized metadata for analysis and viewing.
- Directed, rich content – direct others to specific slide regions using annotations and bookmarks to highlight and navigate to specific expressions and structures.
- Highlight new findings – Biolucida supports slides acquired with most commercial slide scanners and microscopes so you can use your entire collection and protect precious rare glass specimens from potential breakage. Visitors to a slide collection can be directed to content with standard HTML weblinks.
Biolucida allows researchers to share and standardize data via an intuitive yet powerful web interface. Create and share collections of annotated image data and control access with a few clicks. Content from previous research can also be included via image inclusion or simple HTML weblinks.
Biolucida easily integrates with an institute's IT architecture using secure and current standard web technologies. Biolucida utilizes extensive client and server optimizations to ensure the fastest image access experience, even at peak internet usage times.
| System Requirements for Biolucida Viewer | |
| Operating System |
|
| RAM | At least 6 GB |
| System Requirements for Biolucida Server | |
| Operating System |
|
| Processor | minimum 4-cores for 2D/3D whole slide images |
| RAM | minimum 8GB with connectivity of 1 Gbps or great |
Biolucida exists as a standard, easily maintained WAMP/LAMP stack and proprietary C++ derived software.
MBF Bioscience Solves Your Big Data Challenges
>> Learn More
Mapping the Neurons of the Rat Heart in 3D
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American Association of Anatomists Launches Virtual Microscopy Database powered by Biolucida
>> Learn More
Medical Schools Take Learning Online with Biolucida During COVID-19
>> Learn More
Bringing Virtual Slides to the Medical Education Classroom with Biolucida Cloud 2.0
>> Learn More
Download Biolucida for Research product sheet here.
Biolucida® Version 5.0
New Features and Enhancements:
- Images can now be viewed with any standard web browser using a new cross-platform HTML5 web viewer that doesn’t rely on Java or Flash. This feature can be enabled or disabled for any slide collection to control data access. Hyperlinks to images regions can also be shared and embedded within external documents and pages for integration with lab manuals and educational platforms.
- GOTO functionality allows users to easily view and toggle annotations in slides from a clickable list.
- Added a “Filmstrip” that shows and navigates individual planes for image stacks in the web viewer.
- Added support for new whole slide image formats: Zeiss CZI, Olympus VSI, and BigTiff.
- If given permission, users can upload slides and images from the Biolucida viewer or web browser directly to server.
- If given permission, users can download full images from a Biolucida server to their local systems.
New MBF built Jpeg2000 streaming technology with robust support for huge 3D slides viewed by large numbers of concurrent users. - New security framework for Biolucida server processes.
- Added a new WAMP installer by MBF Bioscience with the most recent updated from Apache and PHP.
- A new logging system with improved UI and use metrics added for administrators.
- Viewer support for the latest operating systems (Windows 10, OSX 10.11 El Capitan, Linux CentOS 7)
- Administrators can now view users’ access permissions for all slide collection in one table.
- Support for all images formats served by Biolucida can be enabled or disabled by configurations on the server.
- Slide collections can now be titled with descriptions. Descriptions live at the top of the slide collection and can contain experimental, case, and instructional information.
- Search and navigation results are now presented instantly in a scrolling, rather than paged, format. Searches can also be restricted to specific slide collections, or performed across all slides a user has permission to view.
- YouTube videos can now be viewed directly in the Biolucida Viewer.
- Redesign of the image page and image edit interfaces.
- Added the ability to show either filename or user specified image name for thumbnails.
- Improved scrolling to accommodate large scale file, directory, and collection listings.
View Full Version History Here.
Biolucida: Key Features
Solving the big image data storage, organization, and sharing problem
Biolucida is able to serve whole slide images for all commercially available scientific imaging systems. Large multi-dimensional data sets from light sheet imaging and slide scanning experiments are easily accessed for analyses via Biolucida’s interface to MBF Bioscience products or our well documented API.
Biolucida: Key Features
Data standardization
Biolucida can accommodate various metadata standards, including FAIR data principles. Biolucida and Microfile+ ensure that data uploaded and shared on the web adhere to data sharing requirements and standard that optimize data sharing between laboratories.
Biolucida: Key Features
Multiplatform compatibility
The Biolucida viewer is compatible with PCs and Macs, and the Biolucida web interface can be run in most web browsers. The Biolucida server can run in an institute’s IT architecture, or in an AWS environment provided and managed by MBF Bioscience.
Biolucida: Key Features
Expert technical and content support
The support engineers are at the ready to help educators and institutional IT engineers navigate educational content creation and integrating Biolucida into an established IT environment. Biolucida is build using the most current and security web technologies.
Who Is Using Biolucida?
More than 150,000 students have used Biolucida for Medical Education to study histology and histopathology
News About Biolucida
Medical Schools Take Learning Online with Biolucida During COVID-19
Biolucida for Medical Education is a learning platform that serves high resolution microscope slides to students without the need for a
American Association of Anatomists Launches Virtual Microscopy Database powered by Biolucida
Free resource for educators and researchers features thousands of downloadable histology slides Educators and researchers around the world now have
Cited in Peer Reviewed Scientific Publications
The utility of Biolucida is underscored by the number of references it receives in the world’s leading scientific publications. See examples below:
Hooks, B. M., Papale, A. E., Paletzki, R. F., Feroze, M. W., Eastwood, B. S., Couey, J. J., . . . Gerfen, C. R.
"Topographic precision in sensory and motor corticostriatal projections varies across cell type and cortical area"View Publication
Gerfen, Charles R., Paletzki, R., & Heintz, N.
"GENSAT BAC Cre-Recombinase Driver Lines to Study the Functional Organization of Cerebral Cortical and Basal Ganglia Circuits"View Publication
Daniel, H., Ester, D., P., U. J. F., L., J. A., Timothy, S.-G., A., D. G., . . . Scott, K. J.
"A 3D MRI-based atlas of a lizard brain"View Publication
Castro, A., Becerra, M., Jesús Manso, M., & Anadón, R.
"Neuronal organization of the brain in the adult amphioxus (Branchiostoma lanceolatum): A study with acetylated tubulin immunohistochemistry"View Publication
Chen, C.-C., Winkler, C. M., Pfenning, A. R., & Jarvis, E. D.
Molecular profiling of the developing avian telencephalon: Regional timing and brain subdivision continuitiesView Publication
Hannibal, J., Christiansen, A. T., Heegaard, S., Fahrenkrug, J., & Kiilgaard, J. F.
"Melanopsin expressing human retinal ganglion cells: Subtypes, distribution and intraretinal connectivity"View Publication
Sakano, H., Zorio, D. A. R., Wang, X., Ting, Y. S., Noble, W. S., MacCoss, M. J., . . . Wang, Y.
"Proteomic analyses of nucleus laminaris identified candidate targets of the fragile X mental retardation protein"View Publication
Condro, M. C., Matynia, A., Foster, N. N., Ago, Y., Rajbhandari, A. K., Jayaram, B., . . . Waschek, J. A.
"High-resolution characterization of a PACAP-EGFP transgenic mouse model for mapping PACAP-expressing neurons"View Publication
Karten, H. J., Glaser, J. R., & Hof, P. R.
"An important landmark in scientific publishing"View Publication
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How does Biolucida work?
Biolucida consists of 3 parts: a server computer, Biolucida server software, and the Biolucida viewer. Together, the server computer and server software constitute a virtual central library where your slides are maintained and served. Biolucida can integrate into existing IT infrastructure, it can be set up in another location, or it can be hosted in the cloud with Amazon Web Services.
The Biolucida server software allows educators and students to navigate through large images quickly — there is no waiting for images to download. This
software runs behind the scenes and is not visible to users.
The viewer is the software application that instructors and students use to view, access, and share virtual slides. The viewer can run on any computer (PC or Mac) connected to the internet.
How large can the files be?
Biolucida efficiently serves very large virtual slides. A typical single image size is 10-50 gigabytes, but Biolucida can easily handle an image that exceeds of
terabytes.
Which computer platforms do you support?
The Biolucida viewer runs on Mac and PC, and the Biolucida server software runs on Windows and Linux. The Biolucida web browser viewer also allows viewing
slides on mobile platforms such as iPads.
Can I use images acquired with my slide scanner or my confocal microscope?
Yes, Biolucida supports images acquired with slide scanners from companies such as Huron, Aperio, Leica, Olympus, Zeiss and Hamamatsu. It also supports
images and image stacks acquired with confocal microscopes from companies such as Zeiss, Olympus, and Leica.
Can I easily compare images?
Yes, Biolucida lets you easily compare multiple images simultaneously.
Can I focus through 3D virtual slides?
Yes, Biolucida supports 3D virtual slides and allows users to focus through image planes just like a microscope.
Testimonials
"It was so helpful to have Biolucida already in place with the pandemic and move to online instruction. Everything worked so smoothly!"
"Biolucida is an amazing platform for using virtual histology in medical education that I have been using to aid my teaching practices for years. The medical students have also shown great interest in your virtual slides and that has helped them achieve better results - findings that I have also published."
"I rarely have encountered a company so committed to support and troubleshooting as MBF."
"MBF Bioscience is extremely responsive to the needs of scientists and is genuinely interested in helping all of us in science do the best job we can."
"I am so happy to be a customer of your company. I always get great help related with your product or not. With the experienced members, you are the best team I've ever met. All of your staff are very kind and helpful. Thank you for your great help and support all the time."
"We’ve been very happy for many years with MBF products and the course of upgrades and improvements. Your service department is outstanding. I have gotten great help from the staff with the software and hardware."
Robust Professional Support
Our service sets us apart, with a team that includes Ph.D. neuroscientists, experts in microscopy, stereology, neuron tracing, and image processing. We’ve also developed a host of additional support services, including:
- Forums
We have over 25 active forums where open discussions take place.
>> Learn More - On-Site/Training
We’ve conducted over 750 remote software installations.
>> Learn More - Webinars
We’ve created over 55 webinars that demonstrate our products & their uses.
>> Learn More
Request an Expert Demonstration
We offer a free expert demonstration of Biolucida. During your demonstration you’ll also have the opportunity to talk to us about your hardware, software, or experimental design questions with our team of Ph.D. neuroscientists and experts in microscopy, neuron tracing, and image processing.
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