Cloud-enabled Fiji for reproducible, integrated and modular image processing
Biomedical image analyses can require many steps processing different types of data. Analysis of increasingly large data sets often exceeds the capacity of local computational resources. We present an easy-to-use and modular cloud platform that allows biomedical researchers to reproducibly execute and share complex analytical workflows to process large image datasets. The workflows and the platform are encapsulated in software containers to ensure reproducibility and facilitate installation of even the most complicated workflows. The platform is both graphical and interactive allowing users to use the viewer of their choice to adjust the image pre-processing and analysis steps to iteratively improve the final results. We demonstrate the utility of our platform via two use cases in focal adhesion and 3D imaging analyses. In particular, our focal adhesion workflow demonstrates integration of Fiji with Jupyter Notebooks. Our 3D imaging use case applies Fiji/BigStitcher to big datasets on the cloud. The accessibility and modularity of the cloud platform democratizes the application and development of complex image analysis workflows.