Hello.
I will buy a new patch clamp system, and would like to know how is your experience the equipment that have you been using? I am particularly curious about Igor Pro and full setup from Sutter Instruments, but please let me know about other systems too.
Best regards
Cleyton
We use Igor all the time, but haven't used the Sutter amplifier. We use Igor with a Multiclamp 700B and National Instruments boards (PCIe-6361, USB-6361). There are a number of packages written by various people (including me) to do patch clamp using such a setup. On the plus side, if you are willing to program, you can do almost anything you want. You can design complicated stimulation paradigms, and record from multiple sources, including photodiodes and cameras. (I do not know of confocal or 2-photon microscope control through Igor, though you can work with imported images.) I only have experience with my package, which aims to simplify everything so experiments run quickly and smoothly. Whenever I watch someone using PClamp, it looks like a bit of a struggle.
One particularly good thing about Igor is that you can do all data analysis and figure preparation there. It has a decent user interface so non-programmers can tweak almost every aspect of figure appearance to make things perfect (much harder in R, I am told). So, I like Igor because it can do almost everything.
The difficulty is that being willing to program is pretty important. I have written lots of routines so that the people in my lab don't have to. ChatGPT can't write Igor routines reliably.
-Matthew
Dear Cleyton Sobrinho ,
I will echo Dr Matthew Xu-Friedman in the functionality (and the necessity of some programming skills to use it fully) of Igor Pro here. However, differently from him, we use HEKA EPCs amplifiers with Patchmaster software. People from the Max Plank Institute have available a package for Igor to easily read the files from Patchmaster which makes the analysis of the data very straightforward. Other than the data analysis, graphing and statistics, I have used igor to acquire images, control National instruments AD/DA boards and control peripheral hardware through USB.
About its usability with sutter, I've heard good things about it, had a good chat with their representatives and a good colleague in the Institute used and liked it a lot.
I hope this helps!
Andre
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