Analysis and Quantitation of Biological Images
Session organisers: Dr Alex Knight and Dr Justin Molloy
Thursday 3rd July from 14.15 - 16.15
Modern imaging methods allow highly complex biological structures to be visualised with unprecedented resolution: We can obtain dynamic information about organs and tissue in live animals using magnetic fields; individual molecules within living cells by optical microscopy; and atomic-resolution molecular structures by electron microscopy. Digital images present a major challenge in terms of analysing, quantifying and curating what are often vast data sets. In the most extreme case we might take a data set of a gigabyte and reduce this to a simple, diagnostic, "yes/no" value. Fast computers and new analytical approaches enable highly complex data to be converted to images, movies, atomic models or simple tabulated values that are meaningful to the clinician or basic research scientist. However as such methods move from research to "real-world" applications it also becomes increasingly important to understand the robustness and accuracy of these approaches.