The adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words” also holds true in the field of systems biology. Image-based Systems Biology is a modern approach that aims to extract spatio-temporal information contained in images in a format that can be used to describe and model morphological, functional, and dynamical aspects of biological processes. Image-based Systems Biology seeks to take full advantage of the information in images and establishes an essential connection between experimental and theoretical examination of biological processes at a quantitative level. This approach includes:

Researchers from all fields are invited to communicate their results centered on Image-based Systems Biology in order to exchange novel scientific methods and to share recent achievements from image-driven research in biology. Joint studies of experiment and theory will be highly welcomed. Furthermore, demonstrations of methods for accurate segmentation and classification of regions of interest or object-tracking that can be applied for high-content and high-throughput screening are of interest, as well as computational methods for translating images into mathematical models ranging from differential equations to agent-based methods.

The International Symposium on Image-based Systems Biology has taken place biannually since 2012 at the HKI-Center for Systems Biology of Infection in Jena, Germany.