CIPA mainly provides access to expertise, but also to computer hardware and imaging software. By consulting with our application experts, researchers can save themselves many hours of researching and testing different software and methods, repeating manual steps that we may automate, and so forth. The scope of CIPA can be described as "data to image, and image to information" as we work both with processing raw data from diverse sources into images, and the extraction of useful information from images.

At the national level, these needs have been acknowledged by the Swedish Research Council (VR), which in 2022 established InfraVis (infravis.se) – the national research infrastructure for data visualization of scientific data. CIPA is one of the significant units in this distributed national infrastructure with nine universities. CIPA is coordinating the InfraVis unit at Lund University, and director of CIPA is the vice-director of InfraVis.

To set up a first meeting with CIPA, either online or in person, please contact the relevant CIPA application expert(s).

The Resources page describes some of the hardware and software made available to users. The CIPA office and workstations are located at BMC, floor C14, office C1439a.

Why CIPA?

• CIPA works with small and large datasets generated with different techniques and instruments, including synchrotron beam lines.
• CIPA can help strengthen the design of your experiment as well as the retrieval of quantitative information from images.
• CIPA provides a set of skilled application experts in image processing and analysis.
• CIPA serves users from Lund University and, as far as possible, users from elsewhere, including industry and private companies, both on-site and remotely through user-friendly tools and systems.

Cost of services

• Initial counselling and quickly resolved issues (<1 hour) are free of charge. The use of the CIPA workstations is also free for users.
• For smaller projects (~10-20 hours) CIPA charges 325 SEK per hour (one of our experts working on the case).
• For any projects estimated to take longer than 20 hours, the approximate time will be calculated along with the project and cost plan as well as with delivery details.