Funds are requested for the purchase of a Zeiss IBAS 2000 image analysis system. This is a cooperative endeavor by faculty members in the Departments of Physiological Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, and the Department of Neuroscience, College of Medicine, at the University of Florida. The long term goal of this project is to meet our collective present and future needs for the use of image analysis and related methods in our research efforts. These needs include morphometry, stereology, three dimensional reconstruction and rotation, densitometry, grain counting, feature detection, and motion analysis. At the present time there exists on campus no image analysis system which is available for these varied biomedical research applications in a multiuser environment. Rather, existing systems are typically dedicated to full time use for a specific applications, and in any case are not adaptable to the variety of applications which we need to implement. The system we propose to obtain will meet all of our current and projected needs. It include an extensive library of applications software, which will minimize the time needed for development of specific programs. The efficiency with which the system is utilized will be further enhanced by the assignment of a full time state-funded programmer/analyst to the system.
