Queensland’s state-of-the-art imaging data platform (PITSCHI) introduced support for Persistent Identifier (PID) technology to improve the traceability and reusability of microscopy data. By tagging datasets, instruments and even institutions with unique IDs (like DOIs for data and ORCIDs for researchers), the system ensures that imaging results are more easily tracked, shared and cited - essentially making microscopy datasets “FAIR” and AI-ready from day one.
CMM Director Professor Roger Wepf said: “This is state-of-the-art because it makes imaging datasets AI-ready from day one - with persistent identifiers and automated metadata ensuring traceability, reproducibility, making datasets machine findable and seamlessly integrable into future processing and AI pipelines".
This fantastic achievement was driven by CMM's expert Dr Rubbiya Ali, who has a key role in designing and implementing PITSCHI.
Dr Ali said: "By embedding PIDs into each layer of the data lifecycle, PITSCHI transforms the role of an imaging data repository from simple storage into a dynamic infrastructure for greatly enhancing data discovery, reuse and research recognition. For example, researcher identifiers, such as ORCID, can be linked to individual data sessions, ensuring proper attribution even if a researcher changes institutions or email addresses. This enhances academic recognition, supports automated reporting, and helps track dataset authorship accurately over time.”
PITSCHI, launched in 2021, was originally developed as part of ARDC’s Australian Characterisation Commons at Scale project.
Since 2021, more than 600 researchers have used PITSCHI to manage 760 TB of data from 50 instruments across 9,300,000 files.
