LightForm Enters its
12th Year with a Focus on
Hyperspectral Imaging Systems

Journal Covers Record Our Progress

Personal comments from the founder:

This is Jeremy Lerner, the founder and President of LightForm, Inc.

Yet again, the past year has been a "best year ever". We significantly increased our market in the characterization of nano-materials most notably due to the use of gold and other metallic nano-particles in cancer imaging.

PARISS offers the unique ability characterize entire fields of nano-particles, rods and wires by MIE scattering, direct spectral reflectivity measurements, and in fluorescence. In fact, PARISS performs all three methods on the same FOV without removing the sample.

Traditional methods use SEM or AFM related techniques, at high magnification, to characterize nano-materials. PARISS offers a unique wide-field, low magnification, alternative that addresses the unique characteristics of "bulk" samples.

PARISS has been demonstrated for nine years

It is hard to image that we are now entering our 12th year in business. If we have been in business for twelve years and demonstrating it for nine years; so what were we doing for the early years?

The answer is simple; we were conducting research and development to optimize the PARISS design and write genuinely user friendly software. All this courtesy of three SBIR grants issued through the National Institute of Health. These grants enabled us to bring the product to market fully featured, and debugged!

We first performed live PARISS Hyperspectral Imaging demonstrations, at the 1998 Pittsburgh Conference (PittCon). Since then, researchers have been able to run their samples live, at EVERY conference we have ever exhibited.

The PARISS "workhorse"

Let me explain "workhorse": It seems that not all spectral imaging systems are equally robust! Yet again, PARISS was the only fully functional Hyperspectral Imaging system at the December 2007, Cell Biology (ASCB) meeting!

After all the hoopla and hype emanating from our "competitors," PARISS remains the only Hyperspectral Imaging system that consistently performs exactly as expected - all the time.

PARISS is robust!

When we fly to PARISS demonstrations and exhibitions, we pack PARISS in the same checked luggage as our clothes. While we worry about luggage getting lost, we never worry about a system malfunction, even if brutal baggage handlers do their worst.

This may not seem significant; but is a whole lot more than our "competition can claim!

While we are on the subject of "robust," the PARISS software provides "unmixing" algorithms that work even when faced with non-linear mixing of spectral components. See also the unmixing algorithms web page.

If you want to see a PARISS demonstration in your own lab, please contact LightForm.

I list below a selected historical chronology of papers PARISS users have published since 1999.

If you have technical questions check the FAQ page.

1. 1999: The first independent PARISS publication in the Bio-Sciences: Researchers from Juntendo University in Japan (one of the first groups to invest in a PARISS system) presented a paper with the title “Hyperspectral Imaging of Pathology Samples” at the BIOS, SPIE conference.[1]
   
   This early paper demonstrated the ability of PARISS to discriminate between the fluorophores, Alexa Fluors ® * 488 and 532, and 546 and 568, when excited at the same wavelength. The researchers used Balb/c mouse spleen cells, and the dyes were conjugated with anti-mouse CD4 antibody.
   
   The PARISS software, at that time, used an advanced "white box" neural network for spectral classification in order to accommodate potentially highly non-linear environments.
   
2. 2001: PARISS Analytical Hyperspectral Imaging papers: Researchers at Auburn University illustrate the use of Hyperspectral Fluorescence Imaging in an objective, quantitative analytical framework.
   
   See “Spatial and Spectral Imaging of Single Micrometer-Sized Solvent Cast Fluorescent Plasticized Poly (vinyl chloride) Sensing Particles”. [2]
   
   Almost immediately, analytical research papers from PARISS users across the USA, Ireland and Hungary started rolling in.
   
   
3. February 2003: PARISS makes its first journal cover in BioTechniques illustrating how Hyperspectral Imaging greatly enhances histopathological analysis in brightfield: "Cutaneous Wound Analysis using Hyperspectral Imaging". [3]
   
4. 2004: FRET and PARISS: The first PARISS-based, live-cell, CFP/YFP, FRET paper appeared in “Microscopy and Microanalysis” from researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, with the title “Detection of Real-Time Mitochondrial Caspase Activity, in situ, in Live Cells”. [4]
   
   The most striking aspect of this paper was that excellent FRET data
   was acquired using a video camera on the PARISS system!
   
   A true testament to the outstanding light throughput of the PARISS system. The authors went on to make a pivotal comment:
   
   “While the biological implication for such protease activity we observed in some dying cells remains to be explored, these examples demonstrate the power of spectral imaging to monitor FRET.
   
   None of the other FRET measurement methods, including sensitized emission, acceptor recovery after photo-bleaching or donor fluorescent lifetime imaging (FLIM), can differentiate such situations.”
   
   We now integrate all PARISS systems with high-end digital, CCD cameras
   
5. 2006: Two journal covers: Amazingly, in August 2006, PARISS spectral images appeared on the covers of both “Cancer Biology and Therapy” (CBT), and “Cytometry”
   
   All the authors of the papers that generated the spectral images that the journals used as cover art were very happy! Click here to see enlarged poster versions
   
6. PARISS characterizes malignancies:  A group from the Dept. of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania published "Differentiation of Normal Skin and Melanoma using High Resolution Hyperspectral Imaging", in CBT. [5]
   
7. 2006: The second FRET paper: The same U. Texas group responsible for the 2004 paper published "Spectral Kinetics Ratiometry: A Simple Approach for Real-Time Monitoring of Fluorophore Distributions in Living Cells" in the August 2006 Cytometry. This paper shows the spatial distribution of FRET, CFP/YFP ratios, in living cells. [6
   
8. The Spectral Imaging Tutorial: Also in the August 2006 special edition of
   Cytometry you will find a tutorial on the “Fundamentals of Imaging Spectroscopy” to satisfy an obvious need within the bio-science community for a technical resource focused on the instrumentation side of spectral imaging . [7] ( Contact LightForm for a copy)
   
9. PARISS and LightForm confirmed in a leadership role: Three of the twenty three papers that were published in the August 2006 Spectral Imaging “special edition” of Cytometry presented results obtained with PARISS. (Not including the spectral imaging tutorial that also detailed PARISS).
   
   In fact, PARISS was the only spectral imaging instrument, of any description, to appear in multiple papers. Contact LightForm for a copy of the special edition while they last.
   
   
10. 2007: Radiometric spectral imaging in live animals for angiogeneisis research [8]
    
11. 2007: Hyperspectral Image Analysis of Live Cells in Various Cell Cycle Stages [9]
    
12. Cancer imaging with inert, metallic nano-particles [10]