A grand challenge for research: multimodal, multilevel and multiscale systems in medicine and biology

Coatrieux JL

Abstract

Computational modelling, nano-bioscience and information technology in biology and medicine will play a  major role in the interdisciplinary attempts to elucidate structures and functions of living systems. Developing tools capable to integrate the new advances and make benefit of them is crucial: accumulation of data and knowledge base with only storage and retrieval capabilities will have a poor impact if they are not made “active” or “operational”. This is where models will play a central role in offering, not only sound ways for representation or simulation, but also the appropriate frames to put the players in the right place, with intra- and inter-level coupling and multisource handling. This paper advocated that sequential observations of multiple and complex mechanisms will be of limited interest to understand the inter-relations that are occurring at the same time, and therefore, that designing multimodal, multilevel and multiscale experiments, matched with these models, are of major importance.

Key words: 	modelling, multimodal data, multilevel descriptions, multiscale processing.