Notes from delegates and vendors

[wmoore]

• Already support OME-TIFF, but find it difficult to keep up with schema changes:
  • Prairie technologies. John Rafter jrafter@… Multiphoton and slit/multi-point scanning confocal They export OME-TIFF and their own tiff+xml header. Interested in how to handle large datasets, thumbnailing etc. wrt Insight screen-shot.

• Write multi-dimensional images as tiff stacks.
  • Visitech. Steven Coleman. steven.coleman@… Would like to support OME-TIFF but haven't got around to it Spoke to Steve last year. Pressure from customer (Peter Lipp - Homburg) to support ome-tiff
  • AMG (advanced microscopy group) Bench-top microscope. Doesn't do Z or T but does multi-C as separate tiffs. Not convinced of need for ome-tiff
  • Keyence. Andrew Kominek. Very nice high spec bench-top scope. Could see benefit of writing ome-tiff. Said we should contact their software / head office.
  • Lumenera. Brian Graydon. brian.graydon@… They do cameras, either used through ImageJ/Metamorph or with their software that writes CIF format. Can't see a problem with their current approach but happy for us to be able to read their format.

• Only save single dimensional images Partec. Tiny field microscopes. Only single plane images.

• Amnis (Image-Stream) Darin Fogg dfogg@… FACS analysis with imaging. Analyse various parameters of each cell, plot as for FACS. Can then see image (split view) for each point in plot. Export FCS format for FACS data, or png for split-view of single cells But don't export total image data, or know how it is stored on disk. They prefer it when users export and publish images in their split view format - good publicity!

Analysis software

• Black mesa imaging (not released yet, Mac & Windows - written in C)

Loves OME-TIFF. Doesn't support any PFF.
Interested in licensing BF

• UNC Chapel Hill.

Use C++ wrapper for BF. Happy with this but would prefer complete C++ (no JVM etc)
Thinking of starting company - looking for image DB & seen Perkin Elmer's Columbus
Itk/Vtk? license is incompatible with GPL.
openmicroscopy.org should say "GPL or commercial license available"

Booth visitors

• MM Unix guy - interested in adapting Split_View_Figure.py. Contact him with details of OmeroWeb.

DAY 2

Booth

• SS. Asked about help with LDAP, upgrades, any common admin errors? - will ask on lists & forums IT services are PC only - will try Unix deploy on his own and use that to convince them

• AM & NG. Good discussion about OMERO.editor. Liked a lot of what they saw. Will give it a go.

• MR. Discussed increase in mobile access. Mobile data viewer would be nice.

• General demo of OMERO as candidate for imaging and medical record DB for rare blood cell imaging. Mentioned image rendering, API, Ice, OMERO.tables, custom annotations etc. Wanted 'google-maps' particularly for mobile device. Also ROIs from web/mobile.

• Kevin & Curtis. Talked about OmeroWeb framework. Need to point them to wiki docs etc.

• IMOD user / admin was interested in OMERO for archiving their mrc files.

He has already hacked his own image DB (mysql?) to keep track of his archived mrc images, so there is obviously a big need in the field for something like OMERO. Interestingly, he had no interest in any of the server-side processing I asked him about (even with IMOD).
He said that users would simply want to do all their IMOD work on the client, then import everything to OMERO when they are done.
Then tag, annotate etc for archiving - so as to be able to find it at a later date.

Exhibitors

• SPOT imaging. Low cost acquisition software. Writes separate tiff stacks and was clearly convinced about the need for ome-tiff.

• Analysis guys - booth 1138 Read ome-tiff, but find it difficult to keep up with changes to the schema.