About Karyotutor

Karyotutor is interactive karyotyping and cytogenetics training software, built by Genomic Software in the United States. It grew out of KaryoTutor, a web-based karyotyping training tool that was described in the Journal of Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences University in 2013 and used to train cytogenetic technologists and students for years before today's version.

Why Karyotutor exists

Laboratories now rely on FISH, chromosomal microarray and sequencing, yet G-banded chromosome analysis is still the backbone of cytogenetics. It is how aneuploidies, large deletions and duplications, and cancer translocations such as the Philadelphia chromosome are found. Image analysis software can cut out and arrange chromosomes, but complex rearrangements still need a trained eye.

Training that eye takes time, and experienced trainers are scarce. Karyotutor was built to carry part of that load: trainees practice on real cases as often as they need, get instant feedback on every chromosome, and trainers see each trainee's progress without marking every karyogram by hand.

From KaryoTutor to Karyotutor

The original KaryoTutor was a browser-based application built by Genomic Software. As the 2013 paper describes, it already worked much as Karyotutor does today:

• trainees arranged the chromosomes of a simulated metaphase into a karyotype template, rotating and moving them as they went;
• every chromosome was scored instantly: green when it was in the right place and orientation, yellow when the place was right but the rotation was not, and red when it was in the wrong place;
• reference chromosome images and ideograms sat beside each slot, and a reference library was always available;
• it shipped with more than one hundred training cases selected by cytogeneticists, and trainers could add their own;
• trainers assigned cases and followed each trainee's attempts and scores through an audit trail.

At the time of the paper KaryoTutor was in its third year of use at several institutions, in vocational training programs and undergraduate courses, and had trained several hundred trainees.

The original ran on a browser plug-in technology that has since been retired. Today's Karyotutor was rebuilt for modern browsers with no plug-in, and keeps the same idea at its core. It adds more than 120 constitutional, prenatal and cancer cases, block tests for rapid chromosome identification, learning modules, and tools for educators to organize classes, assign cases and tests, and review trainees' work in detail.

The publication

The article is a letter to the editor. It sets out the case for software-assisted karyotyping training, describes how KaryoTutor works for trainees and trainers, and discusses the technical limitations of the first version. You can read it as a PDF from the journal or find it in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Who we are

Karyotutor is developed and run by Genomic Software, a software company in the United States that has built cytogenetics training tools since the original KaryoTutor.

To talk to us about your course or laboratory, email josh@karyotutor.us or see Karyotutor for educators. Our free Learning Hub has guides and worked cases for anyone learning chromosome analysis.