MICROSCOPES - Hitachi High-Technologies Canada, Inc. - Collaboration microscopy and semiconductor workflow solutions

At Quartz Imaging Corporation, we are constantly working to improve PCI. Version 8 includes exciting, new features which make digital microscopy with PCI easier, faster and more efficient.

Measurement Sequence Function To help with making the same sequence of measurements on multiple images, PCI now allows you to program and save measurement sequence files. The measurement sequence function guides you through making the series of measurements, automatically selecting the appropriate measuring tools, adjusting their settings and labeling the measurements.
New and Improved Measurement & Drawing Tools PCI now includes tools for measuring the areas and perimeters of polygons and freehand shapes, as well as a four point angle measurement tool which permits angles to be measured when the vertex is not inside the image. A space is now inserted between a measured quantity and its units, in keeping with ISO standards. A drawing tool for closed freehand shapes has been added.
Burn CDs and DVDs from Inside PCI PCI now allows you to export files directly to CDs and DVDs. Simply select the files to export and PCI will burn them directly to disc.
Recent Files Tab A new tab has been added to the data manager that shows the images and other files that you have opened most recently. This makes it easy to reload data that you have been working with recently. In the case of the Enterprise database, the information on this tab follows the user. So, the images that you worked with in the lab will be immediately available on your office computer.
Improved Send-To Function PCI now provides a more intuitive way to add external documents to the PCI database. The Send To function has been enhanced to include an icon on the desktop onto which the user can drag or paste files to have them added to the database.
Improved Image File Support PCI’s file import functionality has been improved to provide support for the latest file formats, including PNG and JPEG2000. JPEG2000 offers lossless compression to allow you to compress images with no loss of image quality.
Support for Large Images The maximum image size supported by PCI is now limited only by system memory and whatever limitations are imposed by the particular file format used to save the images. This improves PCI’s support for scanners and high resolution digital cameras.
Smooth Image Display You can now choose to turn on smooth image display which uses interpolation and smoothing techniques to improve the display of reduced size images. This is particularly useful when PCI is used to display line art, including graphs and spectra.
Improved Image Resizing and Thumbnail Generation PCI now uses bicubic interpolation instead of pixel replication to resize images. This improves the appearance of resized images. The same technique is applied to thumbnail generation, resulting in higher quality thumbnails.
Default Overlay Burn-In Option PCI now provides an option to burn in the default overlay immediately upon image acquisition. This allows you to add a copyright or “Confidential” tag or any other information to your images automatically.
Runs on Microsoft Windows Vista™ PCI Version 8 is the first version of PCI that supports Microsoft Windows Vista. It will also run on Windows NT, 2000 and XP.

PCI Standard Features

Runs on Windows NT®, Windows® 2000, Windows® XP or Windows Vista™.
Common user interface for all image sources.
Images can be stored in most popular file formats including TIFF, JPEG and PNG.
Most popular file formats can be imported.
Image manipulation functions include contrast, brightness and gamma adjustment, histogram adjustments, zooming, smoothing, sharpening, median filtering, rotating and resizing.
"Plug–in" interface for user–developed processing and analysis code.
Support for 24–bit color and 8– and 16–bit grayscale images.
Length, angle and area measurements.
Drawing tools operate on separate overlay layer. Overlay elements can be moved or deleted without interfering with each other or the underlying image.
Zooming.
Slide show function.
Construction of anaglyph stereo image from separate left and right images. Includes ability to align stereo pair.
Output to any Windows®–supported printer.
Workgroup Database included as a standard feature. Enterprise Database available as an option. Workgroup Database can be easily upsized to Enterprise version.
Database tracks jobs, sessions, samples, images and external documents including multimedia files.
Permits composition of sophisticated database queries.
Full support for removable media.
Direct export to writable CDs and DVDs.
Robust record locking and file sharing in networked environments.
"Send To" feature allows documents from other applications to be sent directly to the database.
Scan feature automatically searches disks and network devices for images and allows them to be added to the database.
ODBC compliance ensures compatibility with third–party tools such as Microsoft® Access.