Presentation delivered for the 2026 International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) Annual Conference, on IIIF for researchers in the Natural and Engineering Sciences. The central message of the presentation was that IIIF should not be seen only as a visualization layer for digital collections. For research repositories such as 4TU.ResearchData, IIIF can become part of the operational infrastructure that enables scientific reuse, interoperability, and computational access to image-based research data.