Visioncats: Camag's New Software for HPTLC

Visioncats - download a 30-day fully operational test version of Camag's new software for HPTLC at www.camag.com/visioncats.
The qualitative analysis of complex samples such as herbal drugs, traditional herbal medicines, food supplements, or raw plant materials for the cosmetic industry is a challenge for quality control and regulation. With High Perfomance Thin-Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) this challenge is met worldwide with great success. Examples include safe identification, detection and exclusion of adulteration with other plants or synthetic substances, stability tests, as well as investigations of batch-to-batch consistency.
With the new software a visionary approach to HPTLC is offered. For the moment the software is geared to qualitative work including all aspects of qualitative HPTLC be it for cGMP compliant routine work or flexible scientific research. It controls Camag's instruments for sample application, the automated developing chamber ADC2 and the documentation and evaluation system Visualizer. Together with a standardized methodology, validated methods and reference images these instruments form the basis for a plug & play approach in HPTLC: After installation/qualification of instruments a validated method is uploaded (plug) and the user is guided through the analysis (play). The sample-based analysis of the resulting data includes evaluation and documentation by comparison with reference samples resp. reference images.During the product development of visionCATS the newest concepts of software engineering, a modern design and most importantly the complex user requirements have been taken into consideration. With its modern architecture, the intuitive usability and a sample-based data structure visionCATS allows for easy use in single-user mode or in small and medium size networks.For each analyzed sample the data is individually accessible in a database. In addition to the parallel analysis of different samples on the same HPTLC plate it is possible to compare samples from different plates. Results from different laboratories can be shared by exporting data from one database and importing it into the other database. The core of Visioncats is the reproducible generation and processing of digital images of HPTLC chromatograms. High dynamic range images (HDRI) and complex algorithms for image correction (including the compensation of irregularities caused by the illumination or the HPTLC plate) are the basis for the high reproducibility and meaningfulness of the data. Simultaneously quantitative analysis will be possible in future versions of the software.