Exploratory image analysis in cell biology

PickCells is an image analysis platform developed by the Centre for Regenerative Medicine (CRM) at The University of Edinburgh. It combines generic image analysis algorithms, visualisation modules and data mining functionality within a stand-alone Java application.

PickCells provides a graphical environment within which biologists can study multidimensional biological images and explore 3D spatial relationships between objects within complex biological systems such as stem cell niches, organoids, and embryos.

Since January 2018, EPCC has been working with CRM on the development of the platform and its supporting resources.

My EPCC colleagues Elena Breitmoser, Arno Proeme and myself worked with CRM’s Sally Lowell and Guillaume Blin to take PickCells into a state suitable for more widespread promotion with the intention of encouraging deeper community engagement by users and developers. We focused on creating a website for users, developers and contributors and providing consultancy on developing and supporting open source software.

PickCells is highly-modular, and the documentation for each component is held within the associated source code repository for that component. These source code repositories are hosted by Framagit, a deployment of GitLab for free open source software. A website framework was developed using the Hugo static website generator to render content, and GitLab’s continuous integration functionality, GitLab CI, is used to trigger rebuilds of the website in response to any changes in documentation held within any of the source code repositories.

During our collaboration, Sally secured a Wellcome Trust “enrichment” award to support further collaboration on PickCells. This next phase of work, which began in September, seeks to improve the usability of PickCells for biologists who wish to extract information from their imaging data.

Our objectives are to:

• develop an in-application interactive assistant to help users get started with analyses using PickCells filter information

• produce video tutorials

• undertake a usability evaluation of PickCells

• update PickCells and its supporting resources based upon the outcomes of this usability evaluation.

We look forward to reporting on our experiences in a future post.

The PickCells website is still in development, but please feel free to visit it at:

https://pickcellslab.frama.io/ docs/

Our work was funded by the Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund and The Software Sustainability Institute.

Mike Jackson, EPCC m.jackson@epcc.ed.ac.uk

Image © iStock.com/the-lightwriter