Welcome to the homepage of Hooke, a free, plugin-based software for data analysis originally aimed at force spectroscopy experiments!

News: Please help testing the new experimental HookeGUI branch developed by Rolf Schmidt! It features a completely revamped interface which is much more advanced than the current one.

What is it?

It is a software for the (semiautomatic) analysis and filtering of force curves. Force curves are the output of an analytical technique called force spectroscopy. A force spectroscopy experiment usually requires the analysis of thousands of force curves at a time. As of today, there is no standard, free software for the analysis of force curves. Hooke aims to solve that.

What it does?

• View, annotate, measure force curves
• Worm-like chain and freely-jointed chain fit of force peaks
• Automatic convolution-based filtering of empty curves
• Automatic fit and measurement of multiple force peaks
• Handles force-clamp force experiments (experimental)
• It is extensible by users by mean of plugins and drivers

See the DocumentationIndex to help yourself!

A short video showing Hooke in action! (courtesy of Fabrizio Benedetti, EPFL, Lausanne)

Where does it run?

Hooke is routinely run successfully on Windows and Linux based systems. It is possible to run it happily on Mac OS X too (though install can be a bit trickier). Technically, Hooke should run wherever the Python programming language, the Scipy, Numpy, Matplotlib and wxPython librares are supported -that is, basically every serious operating system.

Cool. How can I get a copy of it?

A beta version, updated to the revision 213, is available as a download. Just unzip it in your favourite directory, after having read HowToInstall

You can also download the latest development version from the subversion repository (see Source) or email ms872@cam.ac.uk

If you download Hooke and use it, let me know!

Is this published in some peer-reviewed journal?

Incredibly, yes: Sandal M, Benedetti F, Brucale M, Gomez-Casado A, Samorì B. , "Hooke: an open software platform for force spectroscopy." ,Bioinformatics ,2009

You can view the abstract here. Please cite Hooke if you use it.

But, hey, it doesn't work...

If you have troubles in using it, before throwing it in the trash: 1) try look at the TroubleShooting page or in the discussion group 2) if nothing else helps, ask a question in the discussion group!

Disclaimer

Remember that Hooke is still experimental software! It has been mostly done to fit the needs of its authors, and there is no guarantee it will do what you need. However, you can write us/help us improve it so that it does. We aim to make of Hooke a little, universal tool that can help your research.