A Two-Year Report on foundingGIDE’s progress in Image Data Standardization

The advancement of scientific discovery is increasingly dependent upon the capacity to manage and integrate vast, complex datasets. In life sciences, biological and preclinical imaging stands as a central component of research, encompassing modalities that generate large volumes of data crucial for understanding complex biological processes.

However, the scientific value extends beyond the raw images. The metadata, the descriptive data about the images, and the ontologies, which reference controlled vocabularies and define relationships for the metadata terms, are critical for making imaging data searchable and reusable. The high variability across imaging techniques and rapid technological evolution make the standardization of imaging metadata challenging. Consequently, the exponential growth of imaging data presents a crucial global challenge: how to ensure these rich resources adhere to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) on a global scale.

Two years after its launch, foundingGIDE (founding a Global Image Data Ecosystem initiative) stands as a major global effort to address this challenge and advance the interoperability of imaging data across biological and preclinical domains. Its mission remains clear: to build strong, community-driven technical foundations that enable biological and preclinical imaging data sharing.

This two-year milestone reflects not only scientific and technical progress, but a global movement shaped by researchers, infrastructure providers, policy networks, and global imaging communities. As project partner David Poger noted, foundingGIDE is fundamentally "a global, multipartite, community-endorsed effort towards standardization of image metadata”. With two community events in Japan (2024) and Australia (2025), and a third and final one approaching in Heidelberg in May 2026, foundingGIDE has transformed from a concept into a coordinated, community-driven ecosystem-building effort.

"The project has created a forum where research infrastructure organizations, repositories, facilities, communities of users but also funders and policy-makers across Europe, Japan, Australia and beyond can interact, exchange challenges and priorities, work together and make recommendations open for discussion."

-- David Poger, Data Operations Manager, Australian Imaging Service

This article celebrates the two-year milestone of foundingGIDE, highlighting the substantial technical progress and the global, collaborative network that has been established, moving the imaging community closer to seamless data sharing and accelerated scientific discovery.

Community Engagement in foundingGIDE

The core of foundingGIDE's success lies in its strategy of community engagement through a series of global events designed to bring the global imaging together.

The 2024 foundingGIDE Community Event, themed Connecting communities in the Global Imaging Data Ecosystem, took place in Okazaki, Japan, held back-to-back with the Global BioImaging Exchange of Experience, brought together more than 100 participants from across the world. Hosted by our local partners, ABiS and RIKEN, the 1.5 days' program convened policymakers, funders, infrastructure specialists, and imaging researchers to collaborate on strategies for advancing FAIR biological and preclinical image data. Discussions spanned open science policy, models for metadata harmonization, advances in imaging repositories, and global strategies for sustainable research data infrastructure. 

The community event was followed by the foundingGIDE BioImage Hackathon, hosted at the RIKEN institute in Kobe, Japan (4-8 of November 2024) which brought together developers, ontologists, researchers, and image data experts from around the globe.

The 2025 foundingGIDE Community Event, themed Imaging Data Ecosystem: Towards Shared Solutions, took place in Brisbane, Australia. Hosted by our local partners, Microscopy Australia and National Imaging Facility, the event gathered a global network of researchers, infrastructure providers, and data experts to push forward a shared vision of an interoperable global image data ecosystem. Over 1.5 days, participants engaged in plenary sessions, a dynamic panel discussion, and interactive workshops. Discussions reflected both local expertise and global ambition, highlighting Australia’s coordinated national infrastructure while aligning with international initiatives such as foundingGIDE. The event showcased diverse perspectives, from multimodal brain research to AI-ready infrastructures, facility-level metadata capture to global policy frameworks, and highlighted how local innovations can contribute to global standards.

The third and last 2026 foundingGIDE Community Event, themed From Interoperability to Global Impact, is scheduled for Heidelberg on 4–6 May 2026 synthesizing all progress to date, followed by a hackathon and hands-on workshops on 7-8 May 2026. The initial three days will feature comprehensive plenary sessions covering the technical, policy, and community pillars of the ecosystem, designed to solidify the future roadmap and bring together diverse perspectives. Following the plenaries, the event will transition into a highly interactive phase featuring a hackathon and several parallel workshops. This structure is designed to provide participants with hands-on time to explore tools and standards developed by foundingGIDE and the community, and advance practical solutions for data reuse and integration.

Technical Progress in foundingGIDE

Between the major community events, intensive technical work resulted in three major deliverables published in June 2025, which form the strategic foundation for global image interoperability.

• D2.1 Landscape analysis of existing ontologies and recommendations on a set of imaging ontologies - a comprehensive review of the ontology landscape for biological and preclinical imaging, providing actionable recommendations for harmonizing metadata across repositories.
• D4.1 Report on the recommended ontologies for preclinical image datasets and technologies - a recommended suite of ontologies to describe the multidimensional nature of preclinical imaging data, enhancing findability and semantic consistency.
• D6.1: Report in metadata model overlap and gaps - a review of the metadata models of three major repositories (BioImage Archive, IDR, SSBD:database) to identify common and missing elements, proposing milestones for harmonization while exploring solutions for metadata exchange.

These technical achievements, particularly the focus on ontologies and metadata standards, directly advance interoperability and data reuse. The project tackles the core challenge that, as David Poger put it, while "Science is international [...] so much data is being created but [...] widely agreed standards to describe data," is still a "major obstacle to data sharing but also reproducibility and reuse". The work on harmonising the three major repositories (BioImage Archive, IDR, SSBD:database) through shared metadata models and exploratory cross-repository search portal, is demonstrating the feasibility of creating a connected global network of imaging databases.

Looking Forward

The remaining six months will focus on delivering the project’s key technical outputs: finalizing work on metadata harmonization and ontology recommendations, supporting alignment efforts across major repositories (BioImage Archive, IDR, SSBD:database), and implement the cross-repository search portal on Euro-BioImaging Web Portal. At the same time, shaping long-term sustainability strategies to ensure the outputs continue to serve the global imaging community.

All of this momentum will come together at the final foundingGIDE Community Event in Heidelberg on 4-8 May 2026. This gathering will feature in-depth technical sessions on metadata and ontologies, hands-on workshops, sustainability discussions, and a hackathon exploring cross-repository interoperability. The event will bring the full global network together to consolidate achievements and set the stage for lasting impact.

With the project entering its final, we invite the community to join the third and last foundingGIDE Community Event 2026, to actively contribute to the evolving standards, and help carry forward the shared vision of the GIDE.