Worldwide imaging sharing project launched

A group of scientists are aiming to aggregate image data from around the world to improve studies.

The project, known as the Image Data Resource (IDR), is a collaboration between scientists in the Open Microscopy Environment (OME), the EMBL and Universities of Cambridge and Bristol. The IDR collects and integrates imaging data from experiments published in scientific journals.

Professor Jason Swedlow, who heads up the IDR, said: “Researchers collaborate with each other and keep abreast with research work from the global scientific community at meetings and in published papers, but the image datasets that underpin these communications are almost never published. As a result, there is a huge amount of information that cannot be shared, accessed, compared or understood.”

Sharing data

IDR collects and integrates data from a wide range of different imaging technologies. It links super-resolution microscopy, time-lapse and digital pathology imaging experiments to public genetic or chemical databases. It also includes information on experimental protocols, imaging parameters, and changes to cells and tissues observed by scientists.

Professor Swedlow added: “IDR makes these datasets available, and allows scientists worldwide to combine, mine and analyse these imaging data. The potential to speed up research and link datasets so that scientists can look for patterns and commonalities is enormous. Even before officially announcing IDR, we’ve had contacts from cell biologists, drug discovery scientists and deep learning developers asking if they can use IDR.”

Future uses

This area is of huge interest to drug discovery companies and the biotech industry because it has the potential to identify new therapies and targets, broadening the scope of research by allowing scientists to access each other’s datasets.

Alvis Brazma, senior scientist at the EMBL, said: “Imaging will only be truly transformative for science if we make the data publicly available. Scientists should be able to query existing data to identify commonalities and patterns. But to make this possible we need a robust platform where researchers can upload their imaging data and easily access data from other experiments. The Image Data Resource is the first step towards creating a public image data repository for the life sciences.”

The paper that shows connections between different studies of elongated genes was published in Nature Methods.