A national human neuroimaging collaboratory enabled by the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN)

Abstract

The aggregation of imaging, clinical, and behavioral data from multiple independent institutions and researchers presents both a great opportunity for biomedical research as well as a formidable challenge. Many research groups have well-established data collection and analysis procedures, as well as data and metadata format requirements that are particular to that group. Moreover, the types of data and metadata collected are quite diverse, including image, physiological, and behavioral data, as well as descriptions of experimental design, and preprocessing and analysis methods. Each of these types of data utilizes a variety of software tools for collection, storage, and processing. Furthermore sites are reluctant to release control over the distribution and access to the data and the tools. To address these needs, the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) has developed a federated and distributed infrastructure for the storage, retrieval, analysis, and documentation of biomedical imaging data. The infrastructure consists of distributed data collections hosted on dedicated storage and computational resources located at each participating site, a federated data management system and data integration environment, an Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema for data exchange, and analysis pipelines, designed to leverage both the distributed data management environment and the available grid computing resources.

Fig. 1

Map of BIRN participating sites and BIRN nodes.

Fig. 2

Dataflow diagram showing clinical data being entered into a local database, images uploaded to data grid. Multiqueries run against the federated databases to identify interesting datasets. Datasets are downloaded and analyzed. Analysis results are uploaded to the data grid and linked back to local database.

Fig. 3

BIRN integrated cyber-infrastructure showing the tools developed to facilitate data management, uploading, organization, discovery, access, analysis, and publications.

Fig. 4

Example of image QA report for multiple auditory oddball EPI data collected during an fMRI experiment.

Fig. 5

Integration of segmentation, metric mapping, and visualization software located at distributed sites working together through integrative workflows built on the BIRN distributed infrastructure.

Fig. 6

(a) BIRN query atlas interactive anatomical exploration of a functional/structural imaging study. (b) Formulation of a multiterm query using anatomical information collected interactively and supplemental query terms derived from metadata about the images.