Knowing what happened - Automatic documentation of image analysis processes

Abstract

Proper archiving or later reconstruction and verification of results in data analysis requires thorough logging of all manipulative actions on the data and corresponding parameter settings. Unfortunately such documentation tasks often enforce extensive and error prone manual activities by the user. To overcome these problems we present Alida, an approach for fully automatic documentation of data analysis procedures. Based on an unified operator interface all operations on data including their sequence and configurations are registered during analysis. Subsequently these data are made explicit in XML graph representations yielding a suitable base for visual and analytic inspection. As example for the application of Alida in practice we present MiToBo , a toolbox for image analysis implemented on the basis of Alida and demonstrating the advantages of automatic documentation for image analysis procedures. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.