Working Group 1
Quality Assessment and Reproducibility for Instruments & Images in Light Microscopy
The Consortium for Quality Assessment and Reproducibility for Instruments and Images in Light Microscopy (QUAREP-LiMi), formed by the global community of practitioners, researchers, developers, service providers, funders, publishers, policy makers and industry related to the use of light microscopy, is committed to democratizing access to quantitative and reproducible light microscopy and the data generated by it.
Our mission is to provide a comprehensive set of community-agreed guidelines, protocols, automation procedures and other resources aimed at improving quality control, quality assurance, and instrument/method calibration. The stakeholders advocate for the use of the highest level of reproducibility for data generated by light microscopy methods in scientific research and biotechnology applications. In support of achieving its mission, QUAREP-LiMi:
-
sanctions Working Groups to form teams that focus on specific technical or outreach topics;
-
maintains, disseminates, and teaches best practices, protocols, and software tools; and
-
collaborates with providers of reference materials or instrumentation or other tools that enable the easy implementation of best practices at the community level.
We came together in our first online Web meeting on the 28th of April, 2020, with about 50 attendees. By now (24st of April 2024), the network has grown to 620 people from 41 countries worldwide. We have members from academia (research labs, core facilities), national microscopy communities, companies involved in the microscopy business, organizations or institutions related to standardization on a national or international level, and scientific publishers and observers from funding agencies (see the graph below and on the member page for an overview).
Ten working groups (WGs) were established in the 2nd General Meeting on the 9th of July 2020 to bring our common aims quickly forward. Our web page gives an overview of QUAREP-LiMi’s work. In the 3rd General Meeting, WG 11 “Microscopy Publication Standards” and later WGs 12 “Image Visualization and Analysis” and 13 “Phototoxicity” were established. WG 14 “Environment” and 15 “FLIM” are in the process of being established, and WG 8 is restructured to work on “Education, Training and Outreach”.
QUAREP-LiMi operates a NextCloud and an OMERO server, serving as a centralized repository and exchange point for our collective work. These platforms facilitate collaboration and data sharing among our members.
QUAREP-LiMi is absolutely open to new members, and we are looking forward to your contribution. If you are interested in joining our initiative, please fill out our membership form. Use our form for changing your working group (WG) or joining a new WG. For any further questions, please contact us.
{{ecs-article}}
Working Group 2
25th meeting, 12th of December 2022
Meeting date
12/12/2022 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
We started with a brief report from WG9&co-chairs last meeting, focusing mainly on the next general assembly meeting of QUAREP-LiMi.
In this meeting, we then had a big discussion on Metadata. There is a specific need of finding a good way to collect, name and recover image files.Try to find an agreement on naming the file isn’t universally acceptable. Therefore, the idea is to find a way to recover the most important metadata on acquisition parameters and device settings in a unique format. Omero could be the answer and it requires a list of metadata. In the same direction is also the request from Nature protocol and other editors for publication.
24th meeting, 14th of November 2022
Meeting date
14/11/2022 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
Thanks a lot to all of you who participated in the lively discussion about our “Detection system behaviour measurements” collection.
We discussed several aspects of the table structure for our measurements and analysis data wich needs to be updated. One major discussion was again about the unique identifier. A solution needs to be found in general for Quarep. Until then we use an intermediate solution with unique identifiers in our excel sheet. Also need to ask the HTS community for their expertise.
Furthermore, Kees reported from his last test runs with the APE quantiflash. His presentation can also be found here on our cloud folder. The other test places will report about their experiences and results in our meeting in February.
23rd meeting, 10th of October 2022
Meeting date
10/10/2022 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
We did start our meeting welcoming a new member and refresh a few organisational matters.
This was followed by the report from the WG9 & cochair meeting on Oct 6th:
– More active members are needed for WG9.
– Furthermore, an internal review process was discussed. Please revise and comment on the proposal for the “Internal Review Pipeline”.
The joined group WG2and WG7 is working to consolidate the camera part of the model. The glossary still needs to be finished.
A new organisation of model revision was discussed as well as potential next topics: light sources (maybe two parts: lasers, wide-field illumination), filters, objectives.
We then focused the discussion on AirTable organisation and reporting of measurement and parameters from acquisition and analysis.
As a result of the discussion we agreed to start from excel file in order to define the most important parameter before to transfer all of them in AirTable.
Care should be taken in naming and saving the data in the correct way so that the analysis group can focus on the output parameters and their interpretation.
Acquisition parameters and issue still need to be fixed and all comments should be added to the protocol draft in protocols.io once it is finalised there.
(A QUAREP-LiMi-wide training on ptrotocols.io was planned for beginning of November.)
Still work to do in: testing new samples (marker pen), acquire new images from chroma slide, collect and compare analysis measurements, finalise the transfer of our protocols after the training.
22th meeting, 12th of September 2022
Meeting date
12/09/2022 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
The camera metadata (WG2 + 7) group needs to work on a glossary, explaining the terminology used. It was decided that people from the camera subgroup will start working on this glossary. Furthermore, it was decided that we need to start thinking about the next microscope parts, for which the metadata structure and vocabulary can be standardized. Kees reported further on testing of the Quantiflash standardized light source. A continuous (DC) mode should be implemented in addition to the pulsed mode. The standardized light source will be discussed in detail during the November meeting. Personal learning sessions for Protocols.io will be offered to interested members of WG2.
Working Group 3
Working Group 4
Working Group 5
Working Group 6
6th meeting, 8th of September
Meeting summary
Meeting continued to focus on details of the measuring protocol proposed. Discussion on test targets, beads vs slide etching etc. A stronger call to action to add to the protocol, make suggestions is needed. An excel worksheet should be instituted to list up all major changes to the protocol, who proposed, suggested changes, supporting documentation etc. This excel document should be used to review / accept the changes and produce a modified clean copy to circulate to WG chairs for comment.
Working Group 7
Subgroup Model, 6th meeting, 6th of March 2023
Meeting date
06/03/2023 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
The main topic of the meeting was the discussion of the NBO-Q Microscopy Metadata Map. The Map aims to facilitate the distribution of responsibilities among WGs regarding the documentation of Microscope Hardware, Acquisition Settings, and Quality Control procedures.
Caterina presented the schema she prepared and received feedback.
As a result of the feedback, the map was updated.
The current version of the map can be found here: https://nextcloud.quarep.org/index.php/s/E3AKjNMbWgXDN3B
20th meeting, 20th of February 2023
Meeting date
20/02/2023 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
During the meeting we discussed the following items:
1) Next meeting will be held on March 20th 2023 and then we will continue every two months on the 3rd Monday.
2) Reminders will be sent 1 month, 1 week, 1 day, and 1 hour before each meeting.
3) The work of the WG will continue to concentrate on revising the 4DN-BINA-OME Microscopy Metadata Model and, as much as possible, will attempt to maintain compatibility with REMBI as a high-level set of recommendations.
4) WG7 works to collect the requirements of all WGs and create a consensus that incorporates the metadata requirements of all other WGs. As such WG7 works as an underlying platform on which all other WGs can build. It is important that we do a better job to explain to the QUAREP’s community that our work should be conceived as spanning across multiple WGs.
5) We need a general map of all components of the model, how they relate to each other, and which is the responsibility of which WGs
6) WG7 would like to have time during the annual meeting to discuss with everyone on this!
Subgroup Model, 5th meeting, 6th of February 2023
Meeting date
06/02/2023 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
Discussion concerned primarily on review of current model revision activities and how to best handle the proposal/review/acceptance/implementation process when faced with the need to revise the NBO-Q model. Consensus:
At the moment we are volunteer-driven and changes will have to be done on the basis of individuals taking the lead, driving a revision, putting together a revision and then submitting to the rest of the group for review, acceptance and implementation
In this context, when a team of individuals is putting lots of work in making changes and they request feedback it would be great if people would take into account the amount of work that was done and be respectful
Going forward we will need a formal method to propose/review/accept/implement changes to the model as the current model is not going to work for developers [a rough estimate would indicate that10000 hours of development are going to be needed for each model request for-change)
RE: Camera model revision to increase efficiency concentrate on producing minimal description for each field and in a second round work on a more extensive glossary