CS-Cal: A dedicated tool for evaluation of Clonogenic assay

Software tools: CS-Cal

Wikipedia:
"A clonogenic assay is a microbiology technique for studying the effectiveness of specific agents or radiation on survival and proliferation of cells. It is frequently used in cancer research to determine the effect of drugs or radiation on proliferating tumor cells."

Especially in radiation biology, clonogenic assays are one of the standard methods for testing the effects of different radiation qualities and doses on tumor or normal cell lines.
"Surviving Fraction" (SF) is often used to estimate Relative Biological Effetiveness (RBE) of these parameter combinations.

Clonogenicity (i.e. number of grown colonies per seeded cell) is dependant on irradiation dose.

A general approximation for Photons (X-ray) is given by:
          SF = e^{αx + βx²}

and for particles (Protons, Carbon-, Oxygen-, ... ions)

          SF = e^αx

          with x=Dose and α,β=radiation and target specific parameters

In a typical single experiment cells are irradiated with e.g. different doses, several replicates for each dose. Finally the parameters α (and β) shall be determined.

CS-Cal is a monlithic MS Windows application which enables simple and straight forward analysis of clonogenic assays.
Data are entered (or pasted) into a spreadsheet.
With a few mouse clicks all required data are generated:

statistical data (means, standard deviations)
the mathematical fit (α for linear, α and β for linear-quadratic fit),
iso-dose- and iso-effect values,
basic graphs,
data for export into other graphing programs.

Furthermore:

Plot of RBE in dependance of surviving fraction (~radiation dose)
Compute biological eqivalent dose for different fractionated irradiation schemes

CS-Cal may be executed without installation (even from a memory stick). CS-Cal runs on any Win32 operating system (Windows98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7) or MS Windows emulations (e.g. Wine for Linux and MAC-OS).

For more details visit the CS-Cal page