Definiens Reveals an Integrated Data Management Approach For Image Analysis in Life Sciences Enterprises

Definiens, the number one Enterprise Image Intelligence™ company, today revealed the Definiens Enterprise Image Intelligence™ Suite 7, available immediately. The latest version of the powerful image analysis platform provides Life Science organizations with superior data management capabilities. Definiens Data Management is an open framework that gives organizations easy access to all relevant information acquired in image analysis. The wealth of image information gathered in the various phases of the drug development process can now be integrated across and exchanged within the entire organization. It provides professionals with the best intelligence on which to base better business decisions.

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are under intense pressure to reduce costs and increase productivity. The research and development for new drugs generates vast amounts of complex data. This data is difficult to access since it exists in numerous departmental proprietary IT solutions. According to a recent report from research analyst Frost & Sullivan, “informatics helps to store, retrieve, sort, organize, analyze loads of chemical, biological and mathematical data and arrive at critical and accurate decisions sooner... It is estimated that the integration of bioinformatics can actually shrink the timeline by a couple of years. This saving of two to three years will dramatically cut down the cost.”¹

Definiens Data Management is designed to intelligently manage all image analysis related data on an enterprise level. A central repository automatically stores ruleware and any types of image analysis results and statistics. Powerful and flexible search capabilities quickly locate information, workspaces, projects, results and ruleware while user-defined queries can be saved to enable common retrieval tasks to be reused and automated. Users can also add metadata to better describe objects and perform related searches. Analysis results can be connected to other contextual information using common informatics tools.

In addition to its advanced Data Management capabilities, the Definiens Enterprise Image Intelligence Suite 7 includes the following enhancements:

• Faster image analysis results through improved viewing and visualization tools: with ‘multi-magnification views’ users can easily identify areas of interest, zoom in and out and view different magnifications; new ‘heatmaps’ display results clearly, even over a range of tissue samples.
• Easy creation of new image analysis applications: the new powerful and easy-to-use graphical environment is tailored to needs of scientists, pathologists and users without programming experience, enabling them to configure their own applications.
• Simplified management with a new web-based administrator: centralized management of Definiens eCognition Server, Definiens' high performance grid computing environment, reduces administration costs and enables different groups to share the same computing infrastructure.
• Full integration capabilities across the enterprise leverage existing investments: Definiens Enterprise Image Intelligence Suite 7 collaborates seamlessly with standard databases and third party information management solutions. The open platform and a comprehensive software development kit (SDK) integrate any business process, data source and data target and enable the reuse of existing analysis algorithms.

“We provide biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies with a technology that helps them to rapidly analyze and interpret cellular, tissue or whole body images. Definiens Data Management enables a single view of all the knowledge obtained in image analysis processes. With our new platform, Definiens takes business decision support to a new level,” commented Dr. Wolfgang Rencken, Executive Vice President Technology and Products at Definiens.

¹ Pharmaceutical R&D Strategies, Innovation & Productivity Rationale, #B795-52, October 2006