Sprecher
Beschreibung
In life sciences, light microscopy imaging systems are key instruments for various research areas as they are capable to record multidimensional data delivering major insights into the biology of molecules, cells, and whole organisms. The generated data shows a high diversity in terms of content and size, and is saved in a myriad of proprietary file formats [1]. To quantitatively and qualitatively analyze this data, high demands are set on the technical infrastructure. In addition, data should be stored according to the FAIR criteria ensuring the data is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable [2]. The implementation of the FAIR criteria is strongly supported by national and international research organizations, e.g., the German Research Foundation. To make data reusable and reproducible, convenient options for sharing large, original datasets need to be offered [3]. Especially when sharing data, the annotation of the data with meaningful metadata is an essential prerequisite to enable reproduction of results and reuse of the data for new studies. The required metadata concerns different aspects, such as technical metadata about microscope configurations during image acquisition (e.g., laser lines & detector settings), or experimental metadata (e.g., fluorescent proteins, antibodies & fixation methods). Several consortia have published guidelines about metadata for biological images to advance quality assessment and reproducibility [4,5]. The aforementioned challenges of the various proprietary file formats, the ever-increasing amount of data and the need to enrich microscopy data with metadata confront scientists with challenges that cannot be met without well planned concepts for data management. Ideally, the concepts should ease working with the generated imaging data on a daily basis. One of the most important tools for this is the microscopy image data management system OMERO [6].