A flexible, open, decentralized system for digital pathology networks.

High-resolution digital imaging is enabling digital archiving and sharing of digitized microscopy slides and new methods for digital pathology. Collaborative research centers, outsourced medical services, and multi-site organizations stand to benefit from sharing pathology data in a digital pathology network. Yet significant technological challenges remain due to the large size and volume of digitized whole slide images.

A system architecture for sharing de-identified, research-ready brain scans and health information across clinical imaging centers.

Progress in our understanding of brain disorders increasingly relies on the costly collection of large standardized brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data sets. Moreover, the clinical interpretation of brain scans benefits from compare and contrast analyses of scans from patients with similar, and sometimes rare, demographic, diagnostic, and treatment status. A solution to both needs is to acquire standardized, research-ready clinical brain scans and to build the information technology infrastructure to share such scans, along with other pertinent information, across hospitals.

Enabling collaborative research using the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN).

Objective: As biomedical technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, researchers can probe ever more subtle effects with the added requirement that the investigation of small effects often requires the acquisition of large amounts of data. In biomedicine, these data are often acquired at, and later shared between, multiple sites. There are both technological and sociological hurdles to be overcome for data to be passed between researchers and later made accessible to the larger scientific community.

funcLAB/G-service-oriented architecture for standards-based analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging in HealthGrids.

Functional MRI is successfully being used in clinical and research applications including preoperative planning, language mapping, and outcome monitoring. However, clinical use of fMRI is less widespread due to its complexity of imaging, image workflow, post-processing, and lack of algorithmic standards hindering result comparability. As a consequence, wide-spread adoption of fMRI as clinical tool is low contributing to the uncertainty of community physicians how to integrate fMRI into practice.

Globus MEDICUS - federation of DICOM medical imaging devices into healthcare Grids.

The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard defines Radiology medical device interoperability and image data exchange between modalities, image databases - Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) - and image review end-points. However the scope of DICOM and PACS technology is currently limited to the trusted and static environment of the hospital. In order to meet the demand for ad-hoc tele-radiology and image guided medical procedures within the global healthcare enterprise, a new technology must provide mobility, security, flexible scale of operations, and rapid responsiveness for DICOM medical devices and subsequently medical image data.