OME Files - An open source reference library for the OME-XML metadata model and the OME-TIFF file format

Abstract

Digital imaging is now used throughout biological and biomedical research to measure the architecture, composition and dynamics of cells, tissues and organisms. The many different imaging technologies create data in many different formats. This diversity of data formats arises because the creation of common, cross-domain data standards is difficult and the pace of innovation challenges the durability of any defined standard and the implementation of data stewardship principles such as FAIR1. The Open Microscopy Environment (OME; http://openmicroscopy.org) has therefore developed the OME Data Model, an open, extensible specification for imaging metadata, that supports metadata related to an imaging experiment, data acquisition and any derived analytic results2-4. The OME Data Model has been implemented in OME-XML so that metadata can be stored and accessed by any sof ...