Imaris 9.2 Release Notes

Welcome to the Imaris 9.2 release notes. Please have a look to the overview of Imaris Release notes for information about prior released features and fixed bugs.

Version Date: June 6, 2018

Fast Rendering for Spots and Tracks

With Imaris 9.2 it is possible to interactively render millions of spots. New efficient renderers dramatically improve spot and track rendering speed and make fast rendering possible on normal graphics hardware.

The technology that enables fast spots and tracks rendering is based on the following features

• For each spot only position and radius are uploaded to the GPU
• For each track only segment positions and radius uploaded to the GPU
• Shaders on the GPU compute the rendering

Fast Spots Computation

The computation of spots runs blockwise and multithreaded. It uses system resources efficiently and avoids paging of data to files. It is possible to efficiently compute spots from large 3D images as well as large time series.

Fast Tracking Algorithm

Tracking of many thousands of objects per time point is performed efficiently in Imaris9.2. The linear assignment solver has been improved to speed up the computation of the Brownian Motion, Autoregressive Motion and Lineage tracking algorithms.

Statistics Recalculation Avoided on Spots Editing

When editing spots or tracks statistics will be recalculated only for those objects that require recalculation. For large data this can dramatically improve the time it takes to update statistics.

Multi-Selection on Spots Edit and Surfaces Edit Tabs

It is now possible to select multiple spots with a single mouse click. On the spots as well as the surfaces edit tab it is possible to enable three different selection modes: “point”, “circle”, and “box”. “Point” is the normal selection mode where clicks select what is directly under the mouse poniter. In “circle” mode a circle appears around the mouse pointer on the screen and pressing left-click will select all spots whose center lies within the circle. Pressing Ctrl+left-click will add to the existing selection if some unselected spots are within the circle otherwise it will deselect all spots within the circle. The size of the circle on the screen can be changed using the mouse wheel.

Note that when the selected spots are parts of a track the setting from the track editor tab for “Mouse selects” determines how the selection may be expanded for example to select entire tracks.

In box mode a 3D box appears on the screen around the cursor. This box is positioned in 3D and when using left-click or Ctrl+left-click the spots whose center is within the box will be added to or removed from the selection.

Track Editor with Focus and Improved Usage

To enable working with a large number of tracks the track editor has (turned on by default) a Focus Tracks mode in which only a small number of tracks will be displayed in the trackeditor and the ones that are displayed will be determined based on their proximity to the selected track when “rebuild around selection” is pressed. This allows to focus on tracks that are close to the selected track.

Track Editor “Connect”, “Disconnect at Current Time Point”, “Disconnect All” Buttons

In recent previous versions of Imaris connecting and disconnecting a track was surprisingly difficult. In version 9.2 it is possible to efficiently connect and disconnect tracks. The “Connect” button  allows to connect selected tracks by extending the first object of a track to a previous object in another selected track. The “Disconnect selected objects at current time point” button  breaks the selected tracks at the current time point by deleting connections to objects at previous time points. The “Disconnect all selected objects” button  removes all connections (careful with this! If you hit it accidentally, try to immediately hit “connect”).

Statistics Tab Large Data Capable

The statistics tab for objects in Imaris9.2 is capable of handling large numbers of objects interactively.

Labels for Tracks

In Imaris9.2 it is possible to assign label to tracks. Thereby it is possible to get the assigned labels to track statistics and to export them with the statistics. It is also possible to use “Only show labeled objects” on the color tab to show only those tracks that have labels.

New File Readers

GE Incell

Fixed Bugs