Join the 3rd Get Your Brain Together Hackathon!

Join us for third edition of the Get Your Brain Together Hackathon! This exciting event invites neuroimage data generators, image registration researchers, and neurodata compute infrastructure providers to come together for a hands-on, collaborative experience. Register now and be part of this vibrant community working towards creating reproducible, open-source resources that unlock the mysteries of brain structure and function.

This hackathon will focus on advancing OME-Zarr spatial transformations.

Overview of OME-Zarr

OME-Zarr is a cloud-optimized bioimaging file format that enjoys international community support and widespread adoption in neuroscience. It supports large-scale bioimages with spatial metadata, making it a critical tool for scientific research. The current OME-Zarr standard is enhanced by the coordinate transformations draft, which introduces robust support for spatial transformations. This is particularly important for neuroimaging and other scientific imaging practices, as it facilitates:

  • Reproducibility and Consistency: Explicit support for spatial transformations ensures consistent application across various platforms and applications. This feature aligns with the FAIR principles, enabling independent researchers to verify results.
  • Integration with Analysis Workflows: By treating spatial transformations as a first-class entity within file formats, OME-Zarr allows seamless integration with diverse image analysis workflows, eliminating the need for additional conversion steps.
  • Efficiency and Accuracy: Embedding transformations within the file format minimizes the need for re-sampling, thereby reducing sampling errors and preserving analysis accuracy. This standardization is crucial for handling the massive data volumes generated by modern microscopy techniques.
  • Flexibility in Analysis: Native support for spatial transformations provides researchers with the flexibility to apply, modify, or reverse transformations as needed, facilitating longitudinal studies, multi-modal imaging, and comparative analysis.

Hackathon Agenda

The hackathon is structured into three key components:

  1. Day 1: Tutorial sessions covering the application needs for coordinate transformations, mathematical principles, and current computational standards and tools available in the open-source ecosystem.
  2. Day 2: Small working groups will review and propose enhancements to the current coordinate transformations draft and relevant neuroimaging additions.
  3. Day 3: Hands-on activities where participants will implement and apply the proposed improvements to the standards.

Event Details

  • Dates: Friday, July 26th - Sunday, July 28th, 2024
  • Location: Hybrid event at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, via Google Meet videoconferencing, Image.sc Island Gather.Town virtual space, and Image.sc Zulip Chat.
  • Cost: Registration is free!

Register now and add the event to your calendar!

~ Matt McCormick