QUAREP-LiMi

Overview

QUAREP-LiMi (Quality Assessment and Reproducibility for Instruments & Images in Light Microscopy) is a global community-driven initiative founded in April 2020, comprising 590+ members from 41 countries across academia and industry. It develops common quality control (QC) standards, metadata models, guidelines, and tools for light microscopy. The aim is to make microscopy images comparable across instruments and laboratories, so that results can be reproduced and the data reused. This complements the file format and metadata work of OME, which the QC standards are designed to fit.

Working Groups (15 active)

Key areas include instrument QC, metadata standards, image quality metrics, fluorescent reference standards, publication guidelines, and AI-compatible data mining. Outputs are being formalised into ISO standards (ISO 172/SC 5 Microscopes and Endoscopes).

Key Outputs

• QUAREP-LiMi produces Standard Operating Procedures for widefield and confocal QC.
• It publishes MIAME-compliant metadata guidelines for light microscopy experiments.
• Its guidelines are being formalised into ISO standards (ISO 172/SC 5 Microscopes and Endoscopes).
• Community resources are hosted at forum.image.sc, an open discussion platform.

National implementation

QUAREP-LiMi guidelines are taken up by national microscopy communities. In France, the CNRS optical-microscopy network RTmfm coordinates several thematic working groups that implement these practices on imaging platforms: a quality-control group (GT-3M) aligned with QUAREP-LiMi metrology and QC work, and a data-management group (GT-GeDeM) that develops guidelines for FAIR annotation of microscopy data, Data Management Plans, and platform training. These groups carry international QC and FAIR-data standards into the day-to-day operation of French imaging facilities, in coordination with France BioImaging.

Connections

• relatedTo: OME (QUAREP-LiMi develops QC standards compatible with OME metadata frameworks and tool ecosystem)
• relatedTo: Euro-BioImaging (Euro-BioImaging nodes participate in QUAREP-LiMi instrument QC standardisation)

Resources

• https://quarep.org
• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-021-01162-y (Nature Methods 2021)
• https://forum.image.sc (community forum, tagged quarep-limi)