Dynamic Cell Atlas Specification

Welcome to the Dynamic Cell Atlas (DCA) data resource specifications.

These specifications define standards for storing 5D fluorescence microscopy datasets (3D+time+channels) in a standardized format that makes them interchangeable for further processing, with a focus on self-supervised pre-training AI models.

Version 0.2 (latest) — Last updated: July 08, 2026

• 🚧 v0.2 - WIP
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About

The Dynamic Cell Atlas standard aims to be optimized for handling 5D datasets (3D+time+channels). It also supports 4D data (2D+time+channel, 3D+channel), but will not be optimized for it.

The DCA standard builds upon and aims to be compatible with:

• Zarr v3

• OME-NGFF v0.5

Throughout these specifications, conformance requirements are expressed using RFC 2119 terminology (MUST, SHOULD, MAY, etc.).