2020 BioImage Analysis Survey: Community experiences and needs for the future

In this paper, we summarize a global survey of 484 participants of the imaging community, conducted in 2020 through the NIH Center for Open BioImage Analysis (COBA). This 23-question survey covered experience with image analysis, scientific background and demographics, and views and requests from different members of the imaging community. Through open-ended questions we asked the community to provide feedback for the opensource tool developers and tool user groups. The community’s requests for tool developers include general improvement of tool documentation and easy-to-follow tutorials. Respondents encourage tool users to follow the best practices guidelines for imaging and ask their image analysis questions on the Scientific Community Image forum (forum.image.sc). We analyzed the community’s preferred method of learning, based on level of computational proficiency and work description. In general, written step-by-step and video tutorials are preferred methods of learning by the community, followed by interactive webinars and office hours with an expert. There is also enthusiasm for a centralized location online for existing educational resources. The survey results will help the community, especially developers, trainers, and organizations like COBA, decide how to structure and prioritize their efforts. Impact statement The Bioimage analysis community consists of software developers, imaging experts, and users, all with different expertise, scientific background, and computational skill levels. The NIH funded Center for Open Bioimage Analysis (COBA) was launched in 2020 to serve the cell biology community’s growing need for sophisticated open-source software and workflows for light microscopy image analysis. This paper shares the result of a COBA survey to assess the most urgent ongoing needs for software and training in the community and provide a helpful resource for software developers working in this domain. Here, we describe the state of open-source bioimage analysis, developers’ and users’ requests from the community, and our resulting view of common goals that would serve and strengthen the community to advance imaging science.