Quasi-hierarchical, interactive navigation of images and meta-data in the Open Microscopy Environment

Databases containing microscopy images and associated meta-data present users with the challenge of interpreting complex interrelationships between objects. Effective user tools must support users in the task of interactively navigating and filtering data to identify items of interest and understand relationships between these items. In the Open Microscopy Environment, these relationships often take the form of "quasi-hierarchies": tree-like structures where nodes can have multiple parents. A compact browser for selecting items in a quasi-hierarchy illustrates relationships between items and supports selection of items from any level in the quasi-hierarchy. Multiple interoperating browsers for orthogonal quasi-hierarchies can be coordinated to form a powerful filtering interface useful for simultaneously drilling down from multiple perspectives. These hierarchy browsers can be combined with information-specific displays, including summary views containing detailed information about image sets and image thumbnail displays