Martin Bech says that discussing how to make work flows more user friendly after experiments can make a big difference for increasing research output from the large scale infrastructures.

Establishing a good workflow after a beamline experiment is key to support data analysis. A recent workshop, organised by the AIDA theme back in May, aimed to discuss how large-scale research facilities can support researchers in accessing and processing their data after they leave the beamline environment.

Theme leader Martin Bech explains that, as the user community grows, the need for more user-friendly and easy work flows post-experiment is increasing. Currently, researchers often face challenges in accessing and processing their data once they return to their university. Transferring the data to work or home computers is sometimes difficult, and more often than not, researchers do not have recourse to the same processing tools that were used at the beamline.

– Up to now, we have had many expert users accessing the facilities, and they have been able to work around some of these hurdles. But as more researchers are becoming interested in using the beamlines, we need to make to make the whole process more user friendly.

Highlighted what works, and what to develop

The workshop included presentations from beamline scientists at MAX IV and PSI, Paul Scherrer Institut, the Swiss light source, and IT personnel at MAX IV. By highlighting what aspects that work, and what areas could be improved, together with input from the IT personnel on limitations and potential, the idea was to facilitate a discussion between users, beamline scientists, and IT-personnel.

One important discussion point was how beamlines can provide data in a more user-friendly format, explains Martin Bech. For example, with tomography X-ray imaging, which can be used to scan samples from life science, soil and food for example, one typically records images of the sample from many different orientations. These images are used to create a tomographic reconstruction, a step which is very important to complete at the beamline for the user. It allows the user to open the data at home and get the right volumes associated with the sample. Now this works only partially, as often one must also decide on many different parameters for the reconstruction to work. If they are set slightly wrong, it can be problematic to open the data. Then you need to return to the beamline, get access and reset the parameters.

– Getting these issues ironed out is extremely important to break down barriers for use. This is also what AIDA is all about: to set up a platform for training and help for data and image analysis. The more knowledge exchange and interaction we have around the beamlines and large-scale infrastructures, the easier we can find solutions.

He commends the interaction during the workshop. Within AIDA, they are preparing a report on the most important issues, together with a plan for how some of the problems with data access and analysis can be solved.

Pinpointed important challenges for tomographic processing

Maria Pierantoni, senior researcher at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lund University, was one of the attendants at the workshop. As a MAX IV user, she found the workshop very valuable.

– I am very grateful to the organisers Rajmond Mokso and Martin Bech for organising such a well-planned and insightful workshop! I’m thankful for the opportunity to share my experiences as a MAX IV user and to engage in such fruitful discussions with the other participants. Together, I believe we pinpointed critical challenges in tomographic data processing - and I’m hopeful that the ideas and collaborations from this meeting will help users accelerate their workflows post-beamtime. I am very much looking forward to seeing how the outputs of this meeting translate into solutions!

Read about the AIDA theme

Read about the workshop: Accelerating tomographic data processing immediately after beamtime