Dear colleagues,

Welcome to the QBI Society's June 2023 newsletter!

Review of March 2023 Workshop on Spatial Analysis for Biological Imaging, Imperial College London

In this newsletter we are excited to announce a new workshop to be held in October 2023, but first we would like to thank the Department of Mathematics and the Quantitative Sciences Research Institute of Imperial College London for their hosting and generous support of the recently concluded Spatial Analysis for Biological Imaging (SABI) Workshop. We'd also like to thank the organizers Drs. Ed Cohen, Daniel Davis, and Raimund Ober, as well as all presenters and attendees, for helping to make the SABI workshop a successful event. Here's a summary of the event provided by Dr. Ed Cohen:

"The Spatial Analysis for Biological Imaging workshop was held on March 29th-30th at the Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, in collaboration with the Imperial College’s Quantitative Sciences Research Institute. The workshop aimed to bring together the digital pathology and bioimaging communities to facilitate new collaborations and explore the latest spatial analysis techniques, including machine learning, topological data analysis, and spatial statistics. The event featured 21 talks and 11 posters and was attended by approximately 50 people in-person and 30 people remotely. The QBI Society expresses gratitude to all the attendees and presenters for making this such an informative and enjoyable event. After a prolonged period, it was great to meet in-person again."

Forthcoming events:

QBI Workshop on Multiplex Image Analysis (Download flyer)

• This is a two-day workshop to be held from Thursday, October 12, 2023 to Friday, October 13, 2023 at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, San Diego, CA. The workshop is hosted and supported by the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, in partnership with the QBI Society. The organizers are Sripad Ram of Pfizer Inc. and Sara McArdle and Zbigniew Mikulski of the La Jolla Institute of Immunology.
• Workshop aim: The knowledge of cellular composition and spatial contexture in different tissue beds is essential to understanding normal and disease states. Tissue multiplexing techniques represent a powerful tool to probe the cellular organization with significant implications for basic research and drug discovery and development. The recent past has witnessed an explosive growth of multiplexing techniques, which enable the simultaneous imaging of up to 100 biomarkers from a single tissue section. Common to all multiplexing techniques is the image analysis workflow which converts the high dimensional raw data into useful information (i.e., density, location and phenotypes of different cells). The goal of this workshop is to create a forum to discuss technical challenges, best practices, tips, tricks and pitfalls related to multiplex image analysis. We are soliciting abstracts on topics related to multiplex image analysis including but not limited to:
  • Cell/nuclear segmentation
  • Cell phenotyping
  • Clustering and dimensionality reduction
  • Multiplex assay validation
  • Reproducibility & batch to batch variability
  • Data normalization strategies
  • Statistical and spatial tools for multiplex data
• Workshop outline:
  • Software tools for multiplex image analysis: A training session is planned on the use of QuPath for multiplex image analysis, which is a widely used open-source software. In addition, we are also planning to invite other open-source tool developers and commercial vendors to showcase their software using the same multiplex image dataset that will be provided to them well ahead of the workshop.
  • Roundtable on multiplexing: As multiplexing techniques are increasingly being used in clinical studies/trials, we are also planning to host a roundtable discussion on the opportunities and challenges in multiplex image analysis in clinical samples.
  • Lightning talks session: To increase visibility for early career scientists (PhD students, postdocs and junior scientists), we will host a lightning talks session where the speaker will have 4-6 minutes to present the main highlights of their work.
• Who should attend: The workshop seeks to bring together technical experts, software developers and end users of multiplex image analysis. The emphasis of the workshop is not limited to technical, algorithm development but is also focused on the practical aspects of selecting and evaluating the appropriate tools for various tasks. The training and demo sessions will be beneficial for novice and intermediate users of multiplex image analysis with limited technical expertise. The talks will also cater to advanced users and experts who will have ample opportunities to present and discuss technical/algorithmic details.
• Abstract submission to open soon.
• Website: https://www.quantitativebioimaging.com/qbi2023/mia2023/

Solicitation for ideas for events: We are looking forward to receiving ideas for events for QBI to (co-)host. We welcome suggestions for workshops as well as for future annual conferences. Importantly, we would also like to encourage ideas for novel events. Please send an email to futureevents@quantiativebioimaging.com.

Online video archive: On our society website we have videos of most of the presentations at the latest QBI conference. Many of the videos also provide surveys or tutorials of important topics for microscopy. Please visit https://www.quantitativebioimaging.com/video-library to view these videos.

Jobs listings page: We would like to remind you of our jobs page. Here openings can be advertised. They will also be announced on the QBI Twitter account.

Membership: Those interested in the activities of our society can register at https://app.quantitativebioimaging.com/society/register. There is no membership fee, although a donation would be appreciated to help with the costs of running the activities of the society.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

QBI Society