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The Center for Image Analysis, CIMA, provides services primarily in bioimage processing and analysis to help the Caltech community and beyond advance their scientific discoveries.

Our services include:

• Computational thinking
  We help formulate computational solutions to solve imaging problems. We prize pragmatism in the development of solutions, using tools and, when needed, devising new methods to render the best possible solutions.
• Image processing and analysis
  We aim to create customized processing pipelines suitable to process the images at hand, with the knowledge that off-the-shelf solutions are sometimes hard to come by.
• Consulting
  We provide consultation on image processing and computing in general so one can quickly leverage the tools needed to carry on the desired computations.
• Data processing
  Our computers are loaded with specialized software in the areas of image processing and analysis, visualization, programming languages and APIs, all to faciliate the processing of image data from diverse modalities.

Here are the steps to setup a project with CIMA:

• Project setup
  First two hours meeting are free to introduce the problem, challenges, and understand if a feasible solution can be reached.
• Service level agreement
  We document a Service Level Agreement between CIMA and lab with initially agreed deliverables, deadlines, and approximate working hours which can be revised and extended as we interact and progress.
• Lab guidance
  CIMA works with lab PI approval and guidance from lab members (staff, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students) so we are always on the same page and make adjustments accordingly.
• Computing
  CIMA provides computing capabilities to process image data (e.g. servers with GPUs) and can deploy scripts for image processing and analysis somewhere else, including training for processing on Caltech clusters.
• Hourly rate
  Like other centers on campus and BI, we charge by the working hours: $58.80/hr for Caltech labs, $99.96/hr for users outside Caltech (2023-2025 academic year values, adjusted every two years).

Primary image processing and analysis service areas offered by CIMA are:

• Image segmentation of cells, organs, tissues, and general regions of interest from light (confocal, DIC, light sheet, etc.), and electron (cryo-EM, etc.), microscopy images and other imaging modalities.
• Image registration for colocalization of signals and regions of interest.
• Tracking of motion, lineage, development on time series image data.
• Spot detection to identify nucleotides, single molecule localization in transcriptomics and proteomics.
• Data annotation to assist supervised learning.
• Visualization of processed data to facilitate interpretation of results in publications and presentations.
• Spreadsheet creation containing quantities and signal measurements derived from analysis.
• Data management to assist in storage, annotation, and processing of images.