MIFlowCyt Standard - ISAC Recommendation
Minimum Information about a Flow Cytometry Experiment
MIFlowCyt 1.0
A standard for outlining the minimum information required to report the experimental details of flow cytometry experiments
Document Status
MIFlowCyt is an ISAC Recommendation. This document has been reviewed by members of the International Society for Analytical Cytology (ISAC) and other interested parties and has been endorsed by the ISAC President and ISAC Council as an ISAC Recommendation. It is a stable document and may be used as reference material. This document has been produced by the ISAC Data Standards Task Force (ISAC DSTF) and other members of scientific community as acknowledged below.
- Jamie Lee, Department of Pathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX USA
- Josef Spidlen, Terry Fox Laboratory, BC Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, BC Canada
- Keith Boyce, Immune Tolerance Network, Pittsburgh, PA USA
- Jennifer Cai, Department of Pathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX USA
- Nicholas Crosbie, Inivai Technologies, Victoria, Australia
- Mark Dalphin, Amgen Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA USA
- Jeff Furlong, Department of Immunology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA USA
- Maura Gasparetto, Terry Fox Laboratory, BC Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, BC Canada
- Elizabeth M. Goralczyk, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA USA
- Bill Hyun, Biotrue Inc., San Francisco, CA USA
- Kirstin Jansen, Department of Immunology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA USA
Tobias Kollmann, Vaccine Evaluation Center, Child & Family Research Institute, Department of Pediatrics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, V5Z 4H4, BC, Canada
- Megan Kong, Department of Pathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX USA
- Robert Leif, Newport Instruments, San Diego, CA USA
Shannon K. McWeeney, OHSU Cancer Institute; Division of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine; Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute; Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR, USA
- Thomas D. Moloshok, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA USA
- Wayne Moore, Herzenberg Laboratory FACS Development Group, Genetics Department, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Garry Nolan, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA USA
- John Nolan, La Jolla Bioengineering Institute, La Jolla, CA USA
Janko Nikolich-Zugich, Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute and Oregon National Primate Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR USA
- David Parrish, Immune Tolerance Network, Pittsburgh, PA USA
- Barclay Purcell, Cytopeia Incorporated, Seattle, WA USA
- Yu Qian, Department of Pathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX USA
Biruntha Selvaraj, Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute and Oregon National Primate Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR USA
- Clayton Smith, Terry Fox Laboratory, BC Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, BC Canada
- Olga Tchuvatkina, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA USA
Anne Wertheimer, Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute and Oregon National Primate Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR USA
- Peter Wilkinson, Centre de recherche du Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal, (CHUM) - Hopital St-Luc, Montreal, QC Canada
- Christopher Wilson, Department of Immunology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA USA
- James Wood, Department of Cancer Biology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, USA
- Robert Zigon, Beckman Coulter, Inc. 7451 Winton Drive, Indianapolis, IN USA
- Richard Scheuermann, Department of Pathology and Division of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX USA
- Ryan R. Brinkman, Terry Fox Laboratory, BC Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, BC Canada
Acknowledgment
MIFlowCyt development has been supported by NIH grant EB005034 from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and by the NIAID Bioinformatics Integration Support Contract AI40076 (BISC). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering or the National Institutes of Health. Special thanks to James Wood for chairing the ISAC adoption process.
The International Society for Analytical Cytology (ISAC, http://www.isac-net.org)
The Flow Informatics and Computational Cytometry Society (http://www.ficcs.org)
The Bioinformatics Standards for Flow Cytometry Consortium (http://flowcyt.sf.net)
Abstract
The fundamental tenet of scientific research is that the published results of any study have to be open to independent validation or refutation. The Minimum Information about a Flow Cytometry Experiment (MIFlowCyt) establishes criteria for recording and reporting information about the flow cytometry experiment overview, samples, instrumentation and data analysis. It promotes consistent annotation of clinical, biological and technical issues surrounding a flow cytometry experiment by specifying the requirements for data content and by providing a structured framework for capturing information.
MIFlowCyt Download
Please download MIFlowCyt in the download section at our sourceforge project site.
Alternatively the following links may be used to access the document:
ISAC Recommendation from February 2008: http://www.isac-net.org/media/standards/miflowcyt/MIFlowCyt_080221.pdf
Latest version from ISAC web site: http://www.isac-net.org/media/standards/miflowcyt/latest.pdf
Latest version from this flowcyt.sourceforge.net web site: http://flowcyt.sourceforge.net/miflowcyt/latest.pdf
Obsoleted proposals
History, comments, info to the approval process, etc.
Please download the proposal here:
MIFlowCyt - Normative Standard Proposal version 071101 (PDF)
MIFlowCyt - Normative Standard Proposal version 070917 (PDF)
In the version 070917 of the proposal we have tried to address all comments resulted from a discussion with ISAC members and other experts in the field (shown below). The following MS Word document tracks the latest changes in the proposal: MIFlowCyt including tracked changes to version 070917.
- The version 071101 contains minor corrections to avoid some confusions: (i) Section 3.3.4.6. "Other Relevant Optical Filter Information" has been added (this was the only section not having the "other relevant information" part), (ii) Several sections had slightly confusing working: "Other relevant information shall be provided and this may include... ", which said that "something" was absolutely required while it did not specify exactly what. Affected sections are: 1.9, 2.1.1.3.7, 2.1.1.4, 2.4.8, 3.3.1.2, 3.3.2.6, 3.3.5.5., 3.4, 4.3.3.
MIFlowCyt Examples
Example (PDF) of a MIFlowCyt-compliant experimental description by Maura Gasparetto, Josef Spidlen, and Ryan Brinkman (2007-12-17).
MIBBI
Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences prescriptive checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favour with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. In order to simplify cross-domain comparison and integration, MIFlowCyt has been developed in a coordinated manner with checklists for other high-throughput experiments that are joined within the Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations (MIBBI) project.
Discussion from ISAC
Comments on MIFlowCyt from the closed ISAC form http://www.isac-net.org/component/option,com_mamboboard/Itemid,131/func,showcat/catid,8/ interspersed with suggested resolution can be found also here.