Introduction

The CapiScope Image Acquisition and Analysis software provides a simple and uncomplicated means to capture and store capillaroscopy images from video onto a Personal Computer. The video source can be a live signal direct from the KK Technology CAM1 Capillary Anemometer, KK Technology VCS Video Capillaroscopy System, KK Technology HVCS Handheld Video Capillaroscopy System, any analogue video camera, or pre-recorded video from a VCR. Previously digitised video sequences can also be imported from avi files and also read directly from a Cytometrics Cytoscan via a network connection. Live video can be displayed on the computer screen.

Input brightness and contrast can be controlled using slider controls to optimise the dynamic range of the image input signal. A single frame or short video sequences can be captured by a mouse click, keyboard, HVCS trigger, CAM1 marker or external trigger. By using the mouse, capillaries can be marked or dimensioned from live images, frozen images, or images previously saved to disk. Capillary density (either number or linear density) can be quickly calculated. Dimension and calculated data can be easily exported to other Window applications or spreadsheets, such as Excel, for further statistical analysis.

The optional Dynamic measurement version adds capillary blood cell velocity measurement, automatic movement correction, and continuous capillary width and densiometry measurements.

The actual CapiScope file (.cs1, single image, .dcs video sequence) contains the filename of the image data, together with the dimensions list, comments and capture time. The image data is saved in a proprietry raw binary file (.kkg, single image or .mve video sequence), or optionally, windows bitmap (bmp) or tif formats.

Video can be exported as an avi file.

The optical magnification can be calibrated seperately for the x axis and y axis. Dimensions can then be shown in either calibrated units or pixels.