THE XNAT IMAGING INFORMATICS PLATFORM

描述（由申请人提供）：成像已成为生物医学研究人员使用的关键工具之一，以促进我们对健康和疾病中人类生物学的理解。虽然成像研究的规模和范围已经爆炸，但支持这项研究的信息学工具却没有跟上。该提案的总体目标是开发一个全面的开源成像信息平台，该平台采用最高的工程标准并使用最先进的软件技术。XNAT 2.0平台将建立在现有的XNAT平台上，该平台被世界各地的研究机构广泛使用，是美国国立卫生研究院赞助的研究信息学主干的组成部分，包括生物医学信息学研究网络（BIRN）和癌症生物医学信息学网格（caBIG）。XNAT 2.0平台将作为面向服务的体系结构（SOA）实施，并将在此体系结构上构建一套服务，以支持成像研究企业的核心需求。软件接口也将在XNAT 2.0中设计和实现，以支持第三方XNAT工具和组件的开发，并鼓励图像处理和分析工具的开发人员与XNAT进行互操作。最后，将设计和实现的方法来部署XNAT服务的大规模可扩展的计算系统。由此产生的平台将提高成像研究的质量和规模，并将大大促进多站点协作和数据共享。最重要的是，它将为研究人员及其机构提供必要的工具，以最大限度地发挥成像的潜力，改善健康和我们对人类生物学的理解。公共卫生相关性：体内成像是生物医学研究人员用于研究人类健康和疾病生物学的关键方法之一。本申请中描述的成像信息学平台将使生物医学研究人员能够捕获、分析和共享成像和相关数据。这些能力解决了发现治疗阿尔茨海默病、癌症和心脏病等复杂疾病的方法的关键瓶颈。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Imaging has emerged as one of the key tools used by biomedical investigators to further our understanding of human biology in health and disease. While the scale and scope of imaging research have exploded, informatics tools to support this research have not kept pace. The overarching aim of this proposal is to develop a comprehensive open source imaging informatics platform built to the highest engineering standards and using the most advanced software technologies available. This platform - XNAT 2.0 - will build on the existing XNAT platform, which is widely used by research institutions across the world and is a component of the National Institutes of Health-sponsored research informatics backbone that includes the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) and Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG). The XNAT 2.0 platform will be implemented as service-oriented architecture (SOA), and a suite of services will be built on this architecture to support the core requirements of the imaging research enterprise. Software interfaces will also be designed and implemented in XNAT 2.0 to support the development of third party XNAT tools and components and to encourage developers of image processing and analysis tools to interoperate with XNAT. Finally, methods will be designed and implemented to deploy XNAT services on massively scalable computing systems. The resulting platform will improve the quality and scale of imaging research and will greatly facilitate multi-site collaboration and data sharing. Most importantly, it will provide researchers and their institutions with the necessary tools to maximize the potential of imaging to improve health and our understanding of human biology. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: In vivo imaging is one of the key methods used by biomedical researchers to study human biology in health and disease. The imaging informatics platform described in this application will enable biomedical researchers to capture, analyze, and share imaging and related data. These capabilities address key bottlenecks in the pathway to discovering cures to complex diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and heart disease.