Aims of the NFDI4BIOIMAGE initiative

NFDI4BIOIMAGE will strive to provide scientists from all natural science and biomedical research fields with workable and trusted solutions to handle the ever-increasing amount of bioimage data from the various (light) microscopy techniques and related biophotonic technologies. Bioimaging data should thus be in accordance with the FAIR principles, i.e., be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-Usable. Increasing data accessibility and re-usability will advance bioimage informatics, the scientific discipline devoted to quantitative analysis and software-aided knowledge extraction from bioimage data.

Objectives

To achieve the aims, NFDI4BIOIMAGE will realize the following objectives:
• Standardization: data acquisition, metadata, file formats, (meta)data models, ontologies, annotation tools, data provenance
• Storage concepts and open repositories: access and submission requirements, capacity, long-term vs. short-term, distributed vs. centralized, data flows
• Data integration: combination with -omics data and other discipline-specific data types, integrative dataset queries, interoperability, interfaces
• Bioimage informatics tool development: bioimage analysis, automated AI-based bioimage analysis pipelines, workflow management and reproducibility, interoperability of analysis tools, statistics, and modeling
• Education: training, workshops, online tools, open educational formats
• Networking: international harmonization, knowledge exchange, connection to other NFDI consortia and non-NFDI RDM-initiatives

Services planned

NFDI4BIOIMAGE aims to set up a web portal to aggregate and distribute information, knowledge, and tools for bioimage data management. Items include (not exhaustive):

• Easy to navigate overview about bioimage data management, and related links and tools
• Collaborative work-space for the participants
• State-of-the-art guidelines and tools for image data annotation
• Guidelines and templates for data management plans and electronic lab notebook use
• Guidelines for submitting datasets to trusted repositories/archives, including a collection thereof
• Downloadable and cloud-based software tools and instructions for performing data management tasks

Where necessary, data management facilitators will support the deployment of the developed tools. These are specialists hired and commissioned by the NFDI4BIOIMAGE to deliver project-based support or train local data stewards and scientists involved in bioimage data management.

Summary and Overview

For more information, we provide a comprehensive overview including an NFDI4BIOIMAGE exposé and a one-page fact sheet about the NFDI and the NFDI4BIOIMAGE initiative. 

Focus on the Bioimaging Data Life Cycle

Taking part in the E-Science-Tage 2021 we presented a poster on our NFDI4BIOIMAGE initiative and our focus on the bioimaging data life cycle showing examples of bioimage data management tasks and services & solutions to meet the needs for researchers and IT-providers. Our poster "NFDI4BIOIMAGE - An Initiative for a National Research Data Infrastructure for Microscopy Data" is availabe open access in the HeiDOK repository of Heidelberg University. We feel humbled and honored by the high interest in our initiative and are thankful for the poster price award of this the ESciTage2021 conference.

Original Citation: Schmidt, Christian and Ferrando-May, Elisa: NFDI4BIOMAGE - An Initiative for a National Research Data Infrastructure for Microscopy Data, Conference Item, E-Science Tage 2021, https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00029489