New components of the ACS standard

The ISAC Data Standards Task Force (DSTF) presents to the ISAC membership three proposals of components of the new ACS standard (NetCDF, ZIP, and GatingML).We encourage ISAC members to participate in the forum discussion (login required) regarding the proposals. After the general review period, the Standards Committee will review the discussions and comments to decide whether the proposed components need further work by the DSTF or they are ready for approval by ISAC Council.

NetCDF - The Network Common Data Form

We have been investigating formats reusable for binary list mode data - one of the components of the proposed ACS container. We believe that the cytometry community could benefit from adopting the Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) for this purpose. NetCDF is a well matured open standard that has been adopted in approximately 30 different fields to accommodate for array-oriented scientific data over the past 20 years. NetCDF is a set of freely available software libraries and machine-independent data formats that support the creation, access, and sharing of array-oriented scientific data. Please see the conventions PDF for motivation and details on how we propose to use NetCDF to capture binary list mode data.

Click here to download the NetCDF conventions for list-mode binary data file component.

Gating-ML - Gating Description in Flow Cytometry

Gating in flow cytometry is a highly important process for selecting populations of interests by defining the characteristics of particles for further data acquisition or analysis. Gating-ML represents a proposal on how to form unambiguous XML-based gate definitions that can facilitate the interchange and validation of data between different software packages. Gating-ML files are intended to be primarily used within ACS containers. The latest version of Gating-ML includes support for description of compensation and other data transformations.

Click here to download the GatingML standard description (PDF file).

Click here to download the full GatingML standard proposal (including examples, and XML schemas).

Using ZIP for the Container File Format for Analytical Cytometry Standard

Within this proposal, we suggest using ZIP as the file format for the analytical cytometry standard container. This approach has been adopted by other groups including for purposes such as Java JAR files, OpenDocument and Office Open XML formats, Google Earth KMZ files, Mozilla Firefox Add-ons, Nokia's mobile phone themes, WinAmp and Windows Media Player skins, Magic Draw UML files and many others.

Click here to download the ZIP proposal (PDF file).

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