Image Analysis Company Raises $800K for New Venture

Omero includes an image viewer that allows for annotation (openmicroscopy.org)

16 February 2015. Glencoe Software Inc., a developer of image analysis and management software for research and pharmaceutical applications, raised $800,000 to fund a new venture in digital pathology. Financing for the Seattle company’s venture is provided by TIE Angels Group – Seattle and several other local angel investors.

Glencoe is the commercialization arm of Open Microscopy Environment or Omero, an open-source software and data format for visualization, management, and analysis of biological images from microscopes. Omero provides for a standard client-server architecture for image rendering and analysis, as well as connecting to applications software. The specifications are developed and maintained by a consortium of academic research labs and private companies, mainly in the U.S. and Europe. Omero source code is available under a GNU general public license or commercially through Glencoe Software.

Glencoe, founded in 2005, develops utility applications for Omero, and provides customization and support services for the specifications. The company’s lead product is Bio-Formats, a library of translation routines to convert biological images into some 150 file formats. The formats, says the company, support biological functions and activities such as fluorescence, 3-D cell division including color and time-lapse, and high-content screening.

Digital pathology, according to Digital Pathology Association is “a dynamic, image-based environment that enables the acquisition, management and interpretation of pathology information generated from a digitized glass slide.” In research, says the group, digital pathology is used for high throughput scanning and quantitative analysis of slide images and secure archival of pathology data. In the clinic, digital pathology is found in diagnostics, consultations, decision-making, and medical training.

Glencoe aims to help research and medical labs better manage its collections of pathology images. The company plans to harness Omero to help labs store, catalog, and annotate these images for later analysis or sharing with colleagues. Because Omero is configured to read only the metadata, these operations can be done quickly. The latest version (5.0) of Omero, says the company, supports these functions by enabling storage of images in their original formats, and verification of correct formatting and file integrity.

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