PerkinElmer buys imaging software specialist
portfolio with the acquisition of software company Improvision.
This latest acquisition follows on from PerkinElmer's acquisitions of Evotec Technologies and Euroscreen Products and could enable PerkinElmer to cash in on one of the fastest growing parts of the cell biology market, according to Mary Duseau, business unit leader for detection and analysis systems at PerkinElmer. Duseau believes the market as a whole is worth some $5bn (€3.7bn) a year with and is seeing mid to high single digit growth, with some of the segments such as high content screening (HCS) and software growing much faster Details of the cash purchase of Improvision, who had 2006 revenues of £6m (€8.9m), were not disclosed. According to the company, the purchase will allow PerkinElmer to provide customers with a range of powerful imaging systems for analysing cellular events, from real time imaging of live cells to rapid high content screening of multiple samples. "PerkinElmer are seeing their customers moving from just using biochemistry assays to augmenting these with cellular or systems biology approaches," said Duseau. "This clearly demonstrates to our customers that we are clear on our strategy to build out our cellular science business." Kevin Lorenc, vice president of corporate communications at PerkinElmer, told LabTechnologist.com that the new technologies were very complimentary to the Opera system acquired during the Evotec purchase and would add greater functionality to the HCS Acapella software. The purchase will also give PerkinElmer access to Improvision's Velocity software, which it has been selling with its UltraView microscopy system for the imaging of biological samples such as cell cultures, tissues and embryos. The Velocity software captures these images in high-throughput 3D and 4D, as well as allowing visualisation and analysis of cell based processes. "The difference with the Velocity software is the 3D image rendering that uses technology from the video game world to allow users to look at cellular objects and see dynamic processes occurring," said Duseau. According to Duseau, Improvision's site will become a software centre of excellence, much like the old Evotec Technology site in Hamburg has become PerkinElmer's cellular imaging R&D centre.
