Development of an Ontology for an Integrated Image Analysis Platform to enable Global Sharing of Microscopy Imaging Data

Imaging data is one of the most important fundamentals in the current life sciences. We aimed to construct an ontology to describe imaging metadata as a data schema of the integrated database for optical and electron microscopy images combined with various bio-entities. To realise this, we applied Resource Description Framework (RDF) to an Open Microscopy Environment (OME) data model, which is the de facto standard to describe optical microscopy images and experimental data. We translated the XML-based OME metadata into the base concept of RDF schema as a trial of developing microscopy ontology. In this ontology, we propose 18 upper-level concepts including missing concepts in OME such as electron microscopy, phenotype data, biosample, and imaging conditions.