VarScan is a Java-based tool that is specially designed to be a platform and technology-independent utility for identifying SNPs and indels in massively parallel sequencing of individual and pooled samples. Given data for a single sample, VarScan identifies and filters germline variants based on read counts, base quality, and allele frequency. Given data for a tumor-normal pair, VarScan also determines the somatic status of each variant (Germline, Somatic, or LOH) by comparing read counts between samples.