Design partnership
A fixed-fee, roughly 90-day engagement for a lab that already records holograms or interferograms. You send real frames from your own rig and one reference measurement you trust; we return reconstructions with evidence records, a processing profile pinned to your rig, and a written comparison against your reference.
Who it is for
- Biomedical labs doing quantitative phase imaging or holographic microscopy (research use only — not for diagnosis or clinical decisions).
- Industrial QA and metrology labs with a trusted reference instrument (lab-side only — see For industrial QA).
- University groups in digital holography, interferometry or optical computing who want a recorded baseline to compare against.
What you provide
- Real frames from your rig — typically 20 to 200 — with the wavelength, pixel pitch and distance for each set. Representative, not best-case.
- One reference measurement of the same target, from an instrument or method you already trust (profilometer, interference microscope, AFM, a known calibration target, a bead or cell standard), by day 45.
- A named technical contact.
What you get
- Reconstructions of your frames, each with its evidence record (content-addressed report ID, software version, SHA-256 commitments to input and settings).
- A calibration run on a known target where your setup allows it. It recovers camera pixel pitch; we say so and claim nothing more.
- A processing profile pinned to your rig, kept on your account afterwards.
- Priority engineering: a weekly 30-minute check-in, and your issues at the front of the queue.
- A written comparison report: your frame, your reference measurement, our reconstruction, all three committed, stating plainly where they agree and where they do not.
Timeline
| Day | What happens |
|---|---|
| 0 | Agreement signed by both sides; first invoice |
| 1–14 | Frames received and reconstructed; first evidence records returned; profile drafted |
| 15–45 | Reference measurement received; calibration run where possible |
| 45 | Second invoice; mid-point check-in |
| 46–80 | Comparison report drafted with your technical contact |
| 80–90 | Report delivered; decide whether to continue on a paid plan |
Price
$10,000 fixed. 50% invoiced at signing, 50% invoiced at day 45. No metering during the engagement. Hardware included: a base-level M3 lensless capture unit, assembled and tested, yours to keep (a research unit, not a certified or medical instrument). It usually follows a bounded free validation on your own frames. Your payment terms or PO number go on the agreement. After day 90 you may move to a pay-as-you-go or monthly plan (current prices at https://api.apertureapi.com/signup#plans), keeping your profile, or end with no further obligation.
Data terms (what is true today)
- Your raw frames are not kept. An uploaded file is decoded and deleted within the request; what is kept is its SHA-256 commitment.
- Result packages are kept. The ZIP returned for each run is archived as an audit trail on a separate storage host. There is no automatic expiry today.
- Deletion and retention periods are agreed in writing. There is no self-serve delete button. If you need a fixed retention period or deletion at the end, it goes in the agreement and the operator carries it out.
- No training, no sharing. Your frames and results are used for this engagement only. They are not used to train models and not shown to other customers.
- NDA first. If you need one, it is signed before any frame is transferred.
See Procurement for the full data path.
Publication rights
- You may publish and cite the results.
- Co-authorship follows the journal's authorship rules; where our contribution does not meet them, cite the service with the methods line.
- We name you publicly as a design partner only with your written permission.
- A co-published comparison includes the disagreements, not only the agreements.
Boundaries
No accuracy, traceability or uptime guarantee. No on-premises software. No turnaround promise beyond the weekly check-in. The comparison report is how we both find out how well the reconstruction agrees with your reference on your rig; we do not claim the answer in advance.
Who signs
On our side, the operator countersigns every agreement and issues every invoice. On your side, usually the principal investigator together with your contracts or sponsored-programs office, or the budget holder for a QA department.
How to start
- Check fit with Workflow fit.
- Email system@apertureapi.com with one hologram and its wavelength, pixel pitch and rough distance. We send back a result and its evidence record first, free.
- A 20-minute call, then a one-page agreement for your signer.