Open Microscopy Environment: OME is a consortium of universities, research labs, industry and developers producing open-source software and format standards for microscopy data.

Despite significant advances in biological imaging and analysis, major informatics challenges remain unsolved: file formats are proprietary, storage and analysis facilities are lacking, as are standards for sharing image data and results. The Open Microscopy Environment (OME) is an open-source software framework developed to address these challenges. OME releases specifications and software for managing image datasets and integrating them with other scientific data. OME’s Bio-Formats is a file translator that enables scientists to open and work with imaging data in the software application of their choice. OMERO is an image database application that provides data management and sharing capabilities to imaging scientists. Bio-Formats and OMERO are used in 1000’s of labs worldwide to enable discovery with imaging. Additionally, we have used Bio-Formats and OMERO to build a system for publishing imaging data associated with peer-reviewed publications. The Image Data Resource (IDR) has published >85 studies and > 176 TB of imaging data annotated with >19,000 genes and 31,000 small molecules inhibitors and drugs. IDR includes a cloud-based analysis portal to catalyse the re-use and re-analysis of published imaging data.