Extensible open-source zero-footprint web viewer for oncologic imaging research

 描述(由首席研究员提供)：为肿瘤临床试验管理日益复杂的工作流程和成像分析，以提供及时的、符合方案的评估需要复杂的信息学工具。为了解决这些问题，在过去的10年里，Dana-Farber/哈佛癌症中心(DF/HCC)的CCSG共享资源肿瘤成像度量核心(TIMC)开发了一个软件信息学系统，用于管理肿瘤学临床试验的工作流程和图像测量。该系统目前正在5家DF/HCC哈佛医院使用，以管理600多项活跃的临床试验，拥有800名用户，并已在其他几个癌症中心获得许可并得到实施，包括耶鲁大学、犹他州/亨茨曼癌症研究所和华盛顿大学/西雅图癌症护理联盟。工作流管理信息学系统包括用于协议注册、订单输入、工作列表管理、报告和计费/管理功能的网络应用/数据库。但是，集成的开源图像分析平台是以工作站为基础的，需要在将执行成像测量的每台计算机上安装和更新。因此，开放源码成像系统是部署的一个限制因素，需要在每个将进行成像评估的地点增加IT桌面支持和维护。通过将图像分析功能调整为基于网络的开源平台，将有助于和促进该系统在NCI癌症中心的广泛采用。目前的建议是1)创建一个厂商中立的、开源的、可扩展的、零占用空间的Web查看器和支持服务器，用于显示和分析DICOM图像，以及2)创建一个插件架构，使我们能够为我们的TIMC临床试验管理系统用这个零占用占用空间的Web查看器替换我们现有的开源图像工作站。为了让肿瘤学研究社区广泛使用该系统，除了开发到我们的TIMC Web应用程序的接口外，我们还将实现AIM(注释和图像标记)接口，以便caBIG调查人员和其他AIM框架研究项目可以轻松与我们的Web查看器集成。该查看器将满足特定于肿瘤临床试验需求的放射肿瘤测量的所有基本要求，但也足够灵活，可以根据用户的喜好进行配置，并通过插件进行扩展，以支持作为共享研究资源的各种研究工作流程。为了实现这些设计目标，查看器及其所有功能将专门通过Web浏览器提供给客户端计算机，而无需在客户端计算机或移动设备上安装，这大大简化和降低了软件部署的成本和支持要求，并提高了可访问性。拟议的查看器将使研究人员、成像软件开发人员、临床医生和患者能够在免费可用和开放可扩展的环境中访问肿瘤学临床试验图像。这将促进广泛的成像专业人员之间的远程图像查看和协作图像协商。WEB-DICOM查看器将与TIMC临床试验信息管理系统完全集成，以便这两个系统可以在完全基于网络的实施中在NCI癌症中心部署，而无需桌面IT支持。还将提供AIM界面，以便网络查看器可以广泛集成到caBIG/AIM癌症研究社区。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by principal investigator): Managing the increasingly complex workflow and imaging analyses for oncology clinical trials to provide timely, protocol-compliant assessments requires sophisticated informatics tools. To address these issues, over the past 10 years the Tumor Imaging Metrics Core (TIMC), a CCSG Shared-Resource of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), has developed a software informatics system for managing the workflow and image measurements for oncology clinical trials. This system currently is in use across the 5 DF/HCC Harvard hospitals to manage over 600 active clinical trials, with 800 users, and has been licensed and implemented at several other Cancer Centers, including Yale, Utah/Huntsman Cancer Institute, and UW/Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. The workflow management informatics system includes a web-application/database for protocol registration, order entry, work list management, reporting, and billing/administrative functions. However, the integrated, open-source image analysis platform is workstation-based and needs to be installed and updated on each computer where imaging measurements will be performed. Thus, the open- source imaging system is a limiting factor in deployment, requiring added IT desktop support and maintenance at each location where imaging assessments will be performed. The widespread adoption of this system across NCI Cancer Centers will be aided and facilitated by adapting the image analysis functionality into a web-based open-source platform. The current proposal is to 1) create a vendor-neutral, open-source, extensible, zero-footprint web-viewer and supporting server for display and analysis of DICOM images, and 2) create a plug-in architecture to allow us to replace our current open-source image workstation with this zero-footprint web-viewer for our TIMC clinical trials management system. In order to make the system broadly available to the oncology research community, in addition to developing an interface to our TIMC web-application, we will also implement an AIM (Annotation and Image Markup) interface so that caBIG investigators and other AIM framework research projects can integrate easily with our web-viewer. The viewer will meet all of the basic requirements for radiology tumor measurements specific to the needs of oncology clinical trials, yet also be flexible enough to be configured for user preferences and extended via plug-ins to support varied research workflows as a shared research resource. To achieve these design goals, the viewer and all of its functionality will be delivered to client machines exclusively through the web browser with nothing to install on client computers or mobile devices, which greatly simplifies and reduces the cost and support requirements of software deployments, and increases accessibility. The proposed viewer will enable researchers, imaging software developers, clinicians, and patients to access oncology clinical trials images in a freely availabl and openly extensible environment. This will facilitate remote image viewing and collaborative image consultations among a wide-range of imaging professionals. The web-DICOM viewer will be fully integrated with the TIMC clinical trials informatics management system so that both systems can be deployed across NCI Cancer Centers in a completely web-based implementation without desktop IT support. An AIM interface will also be provided so that the web-viewer can be integrated broadly across the caBIG/AIM cancer research community.