QUAREP-LiMi: A community-driven initiative to establish guidelines for quality assessment and reproducibility for instruments and images in light microscopy
Authors: Glyn Nelson, Ulrike Boehm, Steve Bagley, Peter Bajcsy, Johanna Bischof, Claire M Brown, Aurelien Dauphin, Ian M Dobbie, John E Eriksson, Orestis Faklaris, Julia Fernandez-Rodriguez, Alexia Ferrand, Laurent Gelman, Ali Gheisari, Hella Hartmann, Christian Kukat, Alex Laude, Miso Mitkovski, Sebastian Munck, Alison J North, Tobias M Rasse, Ute Resch-Genger, Lucas C Schuetz, Arne Seitz, Caterina Strambio-De-Castillia, Jason R Swedlow, Ioannis Alexopoulos, Karin Aumayr, Sergiy Avilov, Gert-Jan Bakker, Rodrigo R Bammann, Andrea Bassi, Hannes Beckert, Sebastian Beer, Yury Belyaev, Jakob Bierwagen, Konstantin A Birngruber, Manel Bosch, Juergen Breitlow, Lisa A Cameron, Joe Chalfoun, James J Chambers, Chieh-Li Chen, Eduardo Conde-Sousa, Alexander D Corbett, Fabrice P Cordelieres, Elaine Del Nery, Ralf Dietzel, Frank Eismann, Elnaz Fazeli, Andreas Felscher, Hans Fried, Nathalie Gaudreault, Wah Ing Goh, Thomas Guilbert, Roland Hadleigh, Peter Hemmerich, Gerhard A Holst, Michelle S Itano, Claudia B Jaffe, Helena K Jambor, Stuart C Jarvis, Antje Keppler, David Kirchenbuechler, Marcel Kirchner, Norio Kobayashi, Gabriel Krens, Susanne Kunis, Judith Lacoste, Marco Marcello, Gabriel G Martins, Daniel J Metcalf, Claire A Mitchell, Joshua Moore, Tobias Mueller, Michael S Nelson, Stephen Ogg, Shuichi Onami, Alexandra L Palmer, Perrine Paul-Gilloteaux, Jaime A Pimentel, Laure Plantard, Santosh Podder, Elton Rexhepaj, Arnaud Royon, Markku A Saari, Damien Schapman, Vincent Schoonderwoert, Britta Schroth-Diez, Stanley Schwartz, Michael Shaw, Martin Spitaler, Martin T Stoeckl, Damir Sudar, Jeremie Teillon, Stefan Terjung, Roland Thuenauer, Christian D Wilms, Graham D Wright, Roland Nitschke
Date: 2021-01-21 00:00:00

In April 2020, the QUality Assessment and REProducibility for Instruments and Images in Light Microscopy (QUAREP-LiMi) initiative was formed. This initiative comprises imaging scientists from academia and industry who share a common interest in achieving a better understanding of the performance and limitations of microscopes and improved quality control (QC) in light microscopy. The ultimate goal of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative is to establish a set of common QC standards, guidelines, metadata models, and tools, including detailed protocols, with the ultimate aim of improving reproducible advances in scientific research. This White Paper 1) summarizes the major obstacles identified in the field that motivated the launch of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative; 2) identifies the urgent need to address these obstacles in a grassroots manner, through a community of stakeholders including, researchers, imaging scientists, bioimage analysts, bioimage informatics developers, corporate partners, funding agencies, standards organizations, scientific publishers, and observers of such; 3) outlines the current actions of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative, and 4) proposes future steps that can be taken to improve the dissemination and acceptance of the proposed guidelines to manage QC. To summarize, the principal goal of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative is to improve the overall quality and reproducibility of light microscope image data by introducing broadly accepted standard practices and accurately captured image data metrics.