Software department

Our software development department has highly educated and skillful creative minds. The whole software development process involves various persons with different focus points. We have application specialist representing the domain knowledge, software architects, software developers and testers.
These various roles are described carefully and responsibilities are clearly defined. This is done in alignment with our quality management procedures.
The driving force of all software development is to create an excellent software product for our users, tailored to their needs, and which is easy to learn and operate. Users are involved in the development process in several ways, either indirect via market input from our application specialists and product managers or directly during usability testing, for instance. Feedback from users in the market is channeled via our customer service department into development. This is how we ensure that the products we create are of the excellence our users demand.
The software development process concentrates on reusing components. As a consequence, many various high-end image processing applications have been created which share the same software components. An international team of software developers located in Germany, France and the United States is at work continuously enhancing these applications. Most of the software is written in Microsoft Visual C++ using concepts such as STL, MFC and COM/ATL. High performance imaging is achieved by parallel processing based on the SIMD concept.

Camera development

The knowledge base of our highly sophisticated camera development team covers diverse fields: materials science, CCD technology and optics, vacuum technology, electronics and image processing. This knowledge base is utilized to the advantage of our product portfolio, concentrating on high-end CCD and CMOS cameras for micro imaging applications, including bright field and fluorescence light microscopy as well as electron microscopy.
The cameras developed at Olympus Soft Imaging Solutions do not simply meet demanding imaging specifications. The mechanical requirements go down to the micron scale. This assures that cameras can be interchanged with just the slightest of focus adjustments to subpixel  positional repeatability – ensuring reliable shading correction. With our newest color camera, special attention was given to color management to provide outstanding color fidelity and perfect images. All cameras are fully integrated with their software platforms. This guarantees that users have numerous online functions, such as shading correction, contrast enhancement and live overlays at their fingertips, even during image acquisition.

Illumination systems

Another field of activity of our hardware development team involves illumination systems and fast filter wheels. Fast switching of excitation wavelength is crucial for dual excitation ratio measurements or fast multi-color time-lapse experiments, for example. Olympus Soft Imaging Solutions all-in-one Illumination Systems MT10 and MT20 match this with filter switches of 85 and 58 ms, respectively. Eight filter positions of standard 25 mm size are provided. A unique mechanism (patent pending) allows the manual replacement of filters in seconds – without any need for tools.
The integrated, fast switching attenuator offers seven (14 respectively) intensity grades. The built-in shutter has the exceptional on/off time of 1 ms for the MT20 and less than 5 ms for the MT10 and basically eliminates off-acquisition photo-bleaching, a fundamental prerequisite for imaging live specimens.
The user has the choice between two types of arc burners: xenon, the standard option, with a rather even output over the entire range (near-UV to near-IR) or mercury-xenon with five very intense peaks that guarantee low exposure times for samples with corresponding fluorophores. The stability of both types is much superior to that of standard Hg burners. Additionally, the MT10 and MT20 electronics stabilize – further enhancing performance.

An additional tool developed by the hardware department ist a realtime controller. This independent plug-in CPU board ensures interrupt-free data uptake by the cell^R imaging computer during an experiment. Experiment control and sub-millisecond timing precision are maintained while changing hardware settings. Filter wheel, attenuator and shutter of the MT20 are optimally synchronised with the camera, an optional piezo Z-drive and other peripherals. All modules work in parallel.

High quality standards

Clean rooms ensure we comply with our own high standards. Our quality management observes Olympus' strict regulations applicable to medical products. All employees involved have to be specially trained and qualified in this regard. All Olympus branded hardware and software components are released by Olympus Tokyo.