Over the past year, we've made a public software release (2.6.1) containing significant improvements to the web-based user interface, interoperability with the BioFormats project from our collaborator Kevin Elicieri at UW-Madison, and interoperability with LDAP - which is commonly used for user identification and authentication.? ? One of the significant new features in the browser-based user interface is the development of a hierarchical table viewer developed by Harry Hochheiser. This table viewer is used to display images characterized along multiple concurrent hierarchies and is in use at our new public OME demonstration site: http://ome.grc.nia.nih.gov. The types of hierarchies that can be used are completely general, and can be easily specified by users using editable HTML templates. The scheme is flexible enough to use in Dr. Minoru Ko's stem-cell characterization project, which involves over-expression or repression of selected genes, followed by imaging using in-situ or antibody probes or live cells. All of these experimental parameters including genes being manipulated and genes used for detection can be displayed simultaneously using this table viewer.? ? This year, we also continued to improve the MATLAB interface to OME, and have used it extensively to compute the image descriptors for our imaging projects. Over 1,000 image descriptors have been computed on over 20,000 images. Finally, the entire WND-CHARM classification system has been implemented in OME, allowing end-users to use this without having to program in MATLAB. A detailed description of using WND-CHARM is available on-line on the OME site (http://openmicroscopy.org).
