Dear Jason,
The most flexible approach may be something like storing the original  
metadata written by the instrument with limited access for alteration,  
but allow a working copy that the user can edit.  If someone is going  
to fabricate metadata or muck it up out of inexperience, they will do  
it regardless of the database.  There is too much variability to  
create a foolproof audit trail for metadata and still have a useful  
database.  There are many imaging systems in use that do not have full  
metadata capability, like the older confocals with manual filters and  
lens turrets,  and many homebrew devices.  Systems can get  
reconfigured with lenses, filters, etc., but the metadata may not get  
updated, especially for short term changes. I've encountered  
commercial acquisition software with bugs that required editing the  
metadata.  And, as previously mentioned, most annotations for the  
experimental conditions are done off-line.
My 2 cents is to keep it simple.

Regards and thanks for pushing on this project,
Glen


> Dear All-
>
> Apologies-- this is not a direct confocal question, but it does  
> affect use and analysis of confocal data.  If you don't care about  
> image metadata, then just ignore and delete.
>
> As the OME project moves towards release of OMERO-Beta4 (http://trac.openmicroscopy.org.uk/omero/roadmap 
> ), we have a number of issues coming up we'd like feedback on.
>
> The first is metadata editability.  In Beta4, we've gone for  
> something we call "metadata completion".  This means that, for a  
> given image file format, we capture and find a home for all of the  
> metadata in that format which fits into OMERO.  For some formats,  
> that's easy, because there is so little metadata.  But many are  
> quite rich, and this project has been a huge effort by the Bio- 
> Formats (Melissa Linkert) and OMERO (Brian Loranger, Chris Allan,  
> Jean-Marie Burel) teams.
>
> The result is that we will support 5 rich file formats in Beta4  
> "completely".  Note that we have to make decision about what each  
> piece of metadata means-- we certify that it has been imported into  
> OMERO, although there are a few edge cases where we've had to make  
> decisions about where each piece of metadata goes.
>
> This raises a critical question, that we have debated within OME for  
> years, namely:
>
> What image metadata should be editable? Imagine that some value was  
> either unset or wrongly set on the microscope, a user may want to  
> correct the situation after import. Then, if we allow editing, how  
> much info about that editing should we track?



Glen MacDonald
Core for Communication Research
Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center
Box 357923
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-7923  USA
(206) 616-4156
[log in to unmask]

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