Data Quality Management: Trade-offs in Data Characteristics to Maintain Data Quality

We are living in an age of information in which organizations are crumbling under the pressure of exponentially growing data. Increased data quality ensures better decision making, thereby enabling companies to stay competitive in the market. To improve data quality, it is imperative to identify all the characteristics that describe data. And, building on one characteristic results in compromising another, creating a trade-off. There are many well established and interesting theories regarding data quality and data characteristics. However, we found that there is a lack of research and literature regarding how trade-offs are handled between the different types of data that is stored by an organization. To understand how organisations deal with trade-offs, we chose a framework formulated by Eppler, where various data characteristics trade-offs are discussed. After a pre-study with experts in this field, we narrowed it down to three main data characteristic trade-offs and these were further analysed through interviews. Based on the interviews conducted and the literature review, we could prioritize data types under different data characteristics. This research gives insight to how data characteristics trade-offs should be accomplished in organizations

Accurate and versatile 3D segmentation of plant tissues at cellular resolution

Quantitative analysis of plant and animal morphogenesis requires accurate segmentation of individual cells in volumetric images of growing organs. In the last years, deep learning has provided robust automated algorithms that approach human performance, with applications to bio-image analysis now starting to emerge. Here, we present PlantSeg, a pipeline for volumetric segmentation of plant tissues into cells. PlantSeg employs a convolutional neural network to predict cell boundaries and graph partitioning to segment cells based on the neural network predictions. PlantSeg was trained on fixed and live plant organs imaged with confocal and light sheet microscopes. PlantSeg delivers accurate results and generalizes well across different tissues, scales, acquisition settings even on non plant samples. We present results of PlantSeg applications in diverse developmental contexts. PlantSeg is free and open-source, with both a command line and a user-friendly graphical interface

Using positional information to provide context for biological image analysis with MorphoGraphX 2.0

Positional information is a central concept in developmental biology. In developing organs, positional information can be idealized as a local coordinate system that arises from morphogen gradients controlled by organizers at key locations. This offers a plausible mechanism for the integration of the molecular networks operating in individual cells into the spatially-coordinated multicellular responses necessary for the organization of emergent forms. Understanding how positional cues guide morphogenesis requires the quantification of gene expression and growth dynamics in the context of their underlying coordinate systems. Here we present recent advances in the MorphoGraphX software (Barbier de Reuille et al., 2015)⁠ that implement a generalized framework to annotate developing organs with local coordinate systems. These coordinate systems introduce an organ-centric spatial context to microscopy data, allowing gene expression and growth to be quantified and compared in the context of the positional information thought to control them