With the recent success of the human genome project, researchers must now discover biological functions of the tens of thousands of proteins encoded in the genome. Molecular cell biology and structural biology methods are required for this work.

Modern multidimensional bioimaging methods, such as laser scanning confocal microscopy and other light microscopic techniques, have emerged as a major research methodology in this new era of informational biology. These methods all produce vast amounts of digital information and require specialized computer software to process and analyze it. Several programs intended for this purpose have become available in recent years, but microscopists around the world frequently discover them unsuitable for many of their required tasks. The reasons for this are varied, and include: extensive bugs that take too long to fix, prohibitively high prices (also for updates and bug fixes), algorithms that are undisclosed and as such unacceptable for accurate scientific work, limited sets of features dispersed into separate “modules”, complex and difficult user interfaces, and lack of flexibility in adapting to specific research situations.