TScratch is a software tool developed to automatically analyze wound healing assays (scratch assays). It is available as a stand-alone application using Matlab Compiler on Macintosh (Intel) OS X and PC (Windows) platforms. The downloadable files below are available in two forms, one including the Matlab Compiler Runtime (MCR) v7.8 engine, and one without it. If MCR 7.8 is not installed on your computer, you will need the form including MCR. If you already have MCR 7.8 installed (for example if you have MATLAB R2008a with Matlab Compiler; you can check which version of MCR you have by writing "mcrversion" at the MATLAB prompt), you can download the smaller file.

The manual with installation instructions is included in the zip-files, but is also available here: tscratch_manual.pdf. Some troubleshooting hints are provided below.

The following TScratch packages are available at our new repository

Macintosh (Intel)

Please download the proper file and extract it using Archive Utility. Open TScratch_manual.pdf and read further installation instructions there.
  • Version including MCR (206 MB). The installation procedure was developed by Will Ashby, Vanderbilt University.
  • Version NOT including MCR (3 MB)

Windows

Please download the proper file and extract it. Then double-click on TScratch_win.exe to unpack the program and install MCR (if the version with MCR was downloaded). Then run TScratch.exe to start the program.
  • Version including MCR (231 MB)
  • Version NOT including MCR (3 MB)

To the best of our knowledge the software works in Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. It was not tested on Windows 8, but might work there too. We advise that you download and install the version with MCR in any case, since it will be incompatible to more recent Matlab versions. In short you should download the the Windows version with MCR, unzip it and execute the resulting "TScratch_win" executable. This will only install MCR and should run without errors. You can then execute the "TScratch" executable.

 

Troubleshooting

  • We have observed that on some machines depending on what is already installed, some libraries are not automatically installed. In such cases TScratch may fail to open without showing any errors. If this happens try the following:
    • Find where MCR was installed (by default this is in "C:\Program Files (x86)\MATLAB\MATLAB Compiler Runtime\v78")
    • Within that folder, you can find "vcredist_x86.exe" in the folder "bin\win32". Run this to install the missing libraries

Source Code

You can also download the source code of TScratch. You will need Matlab (R2008a or newer) and the CurveLab library (available at www.curvelet.org) to run it. Please consult the README file included in the source code package for further instructions.

Sample data set

This zip-file contains a sample data set from a wound-healing experiment: tscratch_sampledata.zip (5 MB). Download and unpack it to try out the TScratch program on some real data.

TScratch was developed by Tobias Gebäck and Martin Schulz, ETH Zürich.
The Software is provided as-is, but very limited support might be provided by the current members of the lab.