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:
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sanctions Working Groups to form teams that focus on specific technical or outreach topics;
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maintains, disseminates, and teaches best practices, protocols, and software tools; and
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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.
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Working Group 2
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
10th meeting, 19th of October 2021
Meeting summary
We are currently generating data in several locations and with several different confocal microscopes of the WG4 members. We defined three workflows to analyze the data with the aim to specify contributions of the analysis workflow on the results. We decided to use the suggestions (Meta App) from WG7 (metadata) to save all our metadata. Matadata will be extremely important to discuss our results, thus we established a set of metadata important for WG4 and collect them in a table for future analysis.
Working Group 5
Working Group 6
Working Group 7
18th meeting, 21st of November 2022
Meeting date
21/11/2022 @ 5:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
Caterina reported that all the to-do items from last meeting have been completed. Created a granular task list based on what are tasks identified in each of the Sub-Groups and a link to spreadsheet was added to WG7 mainpage. In addition a proposal was tabled to announce QUAREP-WG7 meetings on Image.sc and it was agreed at the meeting. Ken reported the OME-Meeting on Metadata. Josh’s talk can be found here https://www.openmicroscopy.org/events/ome-community-meeting-2022/ · Great material for advocating about the need of a NG Metadata framework, although no clear definition of storage location. There were much discussion of Nature Methods and Nature Cell Biology request to QUAREP-LiMi to develop a light microscopy checklist for Nature Portfolio. Caterina reported back that we had initial meeting with Rita and Melina to discuss Nature requirements and initial meeting with WG7, 9, 11 and 12 chairs to dicuss next steps. We aim to provide the checklist by Christmas to Nature Methods. Nature is not going to release the data, but something that they will like to work and discuss with their editors.
Subgroup Model, 3rd meeting, 7th of November 2022
Meeting date
07/11/2022 @ 4:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
- Report back from Mathias and Caterina revision of the Camera Metadata Model based on the feedback from the JOINT CAMERA FEEDBACK GROUP Caterina and Mathias have completed the revision of the DETECTION SYSTEM 2022-10-07_NBO-Q_DETECTOR_v3-00-0_DRAFT_V01 spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KQgAClf4lp90sZ0egUez1h2HYwhvC5VFbaBn1mqvgqE/edit?usp=sharing) Caterina and Mathias have worked at testing LinkML as a framework that we could use to represent the metadata model and would allow the automatic generation of different representations starting from a unique source of truth. · Specifically the advantage of LinkML is that it can use a spreadsheet as the source of truth · The spreadsheet has to be following the schemasheet format (https://linkml.io/schemasheets/) o https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wVoaiFg47aT9YWNeRfTZ8tYHN8s8PAuDx5i2HUcDpvQ/edit#gid=55566104 · Mathias and Caterina are testing the schemasheet format to see if it can be used as a source of truth
- Decide on more frequent schedule for follow up meetings · Mathias and Caterina will communicate when the schemasheet version of NBO-Q v3.00_DRAFT is ready to be discussed and presented · David, Mathias, Roland, and Britta will review the 2022-10-07_NBO-Q_DETECTION SYSTEM_v3-00-0_DRAFT_V01 spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KQgAClf4lp90sZ0egUez1h2HYwhvC5VFbaBn1mqvgqE/edit?usp=sharing) so that we can then present it to the CAMERA FEEDBACK GROUP to finalize the request for changes and produce a DRAFT v02 that can be used as a source of truth for implementation
Subgroup Model 2nd Meeting, 5th of October 2022
Meeting date
05/10/2022 @ 4:00 PM (CET/CEST)
Meeting summary
–Caterina and Mathias are having a series of twice-a-week in-person meetings at UMass Med to produce a revised version of the NBO-Q model Excel Spreadsheet that incorporates all proposals for change that emerged from the series of meetings with Camera Manufacturers (referred to as JOINT CAMERA FEEDBACK GROUP)
The product should be done in 1 month.
–This revised spreadsheet will be used as a starting point for our work as well as to solicit a final round of feedback from the JOINT CAMERA FEEDBACK GROUP.
–We will use LinkML as the framework to represent the metadata model. LinkML core format is YAML but a SPREADSHEET can be used as the core representation from which other representations can be generated.
DECISIONS:
NEXT MEETING ON 11/7/2022 AT 11 am ET and then every 1st Monday after that
LinkML will be tested to support the production of different interlinked representations of the model