Workshops

About the course:

The BioVoxxel workshop consists of different basic hands-on modules and can additionally be tailored to the specific scientific interests and needs of the participants. Therefore, specific questions or problems can be communicated with BioVoxxel in advance and can be discussed during the workshop to find potential solutions. This will increase the value and benefit for each participant. All participant imaging data discussed during the workshop will be treated as confidential!

The course content has a focus on micrographs and is constantly reviewed and updated to keep up with the rapidly changing data acquisition and analysis necessities as well as scientific ethics guideline suggestions.

This course will enable you to efficiently analyze your imaging data according to high scientific standards! Furthermore, BioVoxxel offers flexibility in topics and workshop dates under guidance of an experienced scientist.

Also see: Current workshop dates and references

Want to have a glance at a specialized workshop, see here: BioVoxxel @ Imagej Conference 2015, Madison (WI), USA

Course Features:

Acquire practical skills making your daily work more efficient
Courses are:
- Tailored for PhD-Students and PostDocs in Life Sciences
- Available as individual 2-, 2.5- and 3-day courses
- Individualized workshop program and specific solutions
- In-house workshop at your institute
- In English and German (course material in English)
No commercial software necessary
High quality scientific software will be provided and introduced
Scientific Ethics in image data handling
How to extract most information from your imaging data
Basics in macro programming to allow efficient standardized analyses
Extensive hands-on sessions and practical exercises
Detailed course skript and free software add-ons included
Participation in the BioVoxxel workshop can be certified

Workshop, Oslo (Norway), 2014

Detailed information and prices can be retrieved by contacting BioVoxxel.

Information for participants:

If you have specific questions or problems regarding your imaging data you want to be addressed during the workshop please forward them at least one week ahead of the workshop to info(at)biovoxxel(dot)de (best with example images attached if possible). Participant imaging data will be treated as confidential!
bring your own laptop!
bring a lot of energy, have a broad interest (you will learn more than you expect) and enjoyment!

Why is education in scientific image handling, processing and analysis important?

Scientific digital imaging is very diverse with a huge range of methods and resulting images. The final goal of all scientists is to publish the data in a renowned journal in their field of research. One essential part in publications is to present data in form of figures. Therefore, a least biased choice of representative images of the experiment is already the first critical step (besides prior proper imaging device adjustment and proper image acquisition techniques). Thereafter, images are often subject to editing. The reason/intention for the image editing should already be questioned. Is it applied to improve visibility of features, to direct the observers view to specific regions, to get rid of “ugly background” or dirt from the sample preparation or to underscore points for or against a hypothesis?

Mostly, image editing (as well as image analysis) is done based on good intentions but influenced by natural bias (e.g. our visual system [1]) and often a lack of sound knowledge in image processing techniques. Not seldom, this leads to alterations in the image data which very quickly might be considered as misrepresentation of data. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) figured out that from all cases they opened in 2007-2008 for investigation against potential scientific misconduct 68% included image data manipulation [2].
Of consideration is the fact that images we take in science ARE precious data and need to be handled as such [3].

In the last years the awareness in this field increased and the number of journals explicitly stating strict image data related guidelines and enforcing compliance is (too) slowly increasing.
Additionally, several whitepapers with a common tenor of suggested guidelines for image processing of scientific images are available [4], [5], [6], [7], [8].

Besides those guidelines the education of young scientists in image processing, analysis, handling of scientific images and publication ethics is essential. BioVoxxel is dedicated to communicate skills in good scientific practice regarding digital images to the scientific community to help preventing unintentional image data alterations (see below).

Furthermore, BioVoxxel offers consulting services regarding the assessment of image manipulation