EMU: reconfigurable graphical user interfaces for Micro-Manager
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SOFTWARE
Open Access
EMU: reconfigurable graphical user interfaces for Micro-Manager Joran Deschamps* *Correspondence: [email protected] European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Meyerhofstrasse 1, Heidelberg, Germany
and Jonas Ries
Abstract Background: Advanced light microscopy methods are key to many biological studies. Their ease of use depends, besides experimental aspects, on intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUI). The open-source software Micro-Manager offers a universal GUI for microscope control but requires implementing plugins to further tailor it to specific systems. However, GUIs are often tailored to a single system. Since even similar devices can have different Micro-Manager device properties, such as power percentage versus absolute power, directly transferring a GUI to another instrument usually requires changing the source-code. Results: We developed Easier Micro-Manager User interface (EMU), a Micro-Manager plugin, to simplify building flexible and reconfigurable GUIs. EMU can be seamlessly used with the Java Swing library to create device-independent GUIs for Micro-Manager. Such GUIs are easily transferred to another microscope thanks to an intuitive configuration menu that includes mapping of the device properties to the GUI functionalities and customization of the graphical elements. We also provide resources such as user and programming guides, a tutorial and code examples. Conclusions: Micro-Manager users now have a powerful tool to improve the user experience on their instruments. EMU GUIs can be easily configured for new microscopes and shared with other research groups. In the future, newly developed GUIs will be added to EMU to benefit the whole community. Keywords: Microscopy, User interface, GUI, Micro-Manager
Background Light microscopy is an ever-growing field with countless applications in biosciences. A substantial portion of technology developments and cutting-edge research are carried out on custom microscopes because of their high flexibility. Beyond the mechanical and optical requirements of such microscopes, researchers face the challenges of controlling the hardware and presenting the users with an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). While control software are often developed for a specific instrument, a number of more general
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