Mission

The Center for Advanced Methods in Biological Image Analysis, CAMBIA, is a pilot center with the Beckman Institute at Caltech. It was established in fiscal year 2015-2016 with a five years commitment to tackle the then identified rapidly increasing needs of Caltech biology labs for help and advice with image processing and analysis. The center is primarily funded by the Beckman Foundation and from donations to the Beckman Institute and directly to the center.

The mission of the center has been to research and develop computational methods to help the Caltech community fulfill its research goals, promote outreach, and educate and inform students and postdocs in its areas of expertise. The center shares know-how and computing capabilities predominantly in the areas of image processing and analysis, providing competencies to groups and individuals lacking fundamental expertise in these areas while developing cutting edge innovative solutions.

The center develops new methods and software aimed to extract quantitative information from image data that is applicable to diverse biological domains. It develops customized machine learning software that is accelerating the way we extract information from cells and their spatial organization from microscope images. The center brings many years of expertise to solve image analysis problems that the labs themselves most often cannot afford and where the combination of research and development of new algorithms and software is necessary to fulfill specific lab needs.