Bioimage informatics for experimental biology

Over the past twenty years there have been great advances in light microscopy with the result that multidimensional imaging has driven a revolution in modern biology. The development of new approaches of data acquisition is reported frequently, and yet the significant data management and analysis challenges presented by these new complex datasets remain largely unsolved. As in the well-developed field of genome bioinformatics, central repositories are and will be key resources, but there is a critical need for informatics tools in individual laboratories to help manage, share, visualize, and analyze image data. In this article we present the recent efforts by the bioimage informatics community to tackle these challenges, and discuss our own vision for future development of bioimage informatics solutions.