Bio-Rad Introduces Technology for Comparative Visualization of Spectral, Chromatographic and Other Graphical Data

PHILADELPHIA, PA, March 14, 2006 – Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (AMEX: BIO and BIOb) announced today the enhancement of its KnowItAll^® Informatics System offering comparative visualization, data mining and analysis to assess the similarities and dissimilarities in massive amounts of spectral, chromatographic or other graphical data. Overlap Density Heatmaps and Overlap Density Consensus Object displays are patent-pending technologies that allow clear and simple visualization of the most common (through least common) features of overlapped objects by color coding the areas from the highest to the lowest amount of overlap.

“Not being able to ‘see the forest for the trees’ is an inherent problem in the traditional stacked display of spectra or chromatograms, because information content diminishes as more objects are stacked,” said Ty Abshear, Bio-Rad’s Informatics Division Head of Software Development and inventor and lead author of the patent for the Overlap Density Heatmap technology. “Overlap Density Heatmaps reverse this situation by allowing comparative visualization of the overlap of vast numbers of spectra or chromatograms.”

Overlap Density Heatmaps and Overlap Density Consensus Object displays can be used to analyze large amounts of graphical data coming from cheminformatics, spectroscopy, metabolomics, chemometrics, genomics and/or proteomics. They can also be used with any analytical, chromatographic or graphical techniques.

Traditionally, the visualization of multiple spectra or chromatograms takes place in an overlay, offset or stacked plot. These plotting methods obliterate trends when viewing large amounts of data. The Overlap Density Heatmap and Overlap Density Consensus Spectrum technologies manage large amounts of data so that trends and other useful information can be observed.

“The addition of these patent-pending technologies to the KnowItAll^® Informatics System enhances data mining, visualization and analysis,” said Bio-Rad's Informatics Division General Manager Gregory M. Banik, Ph.D. (Banik and Senior Software Developer Karl Nedwed are co-authors of the patent-pending technology). “Users are able to extract greater knowledge from spectral and chromatographic data and take advantage of KnowItAll’s^® tools for data processing, storage, searching and reporting.”