Biomedical Informatics Research Network: integrating multi-site neuroimaging data acquisition, data sharing and brain morphometric processing

The Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) is a National Institutes of Health (USA) initiative that fosters distributed collaborations in biomedical science by utilizing information technology innovations. Morphometry BIRN is one of its testbeds and has the goal to develop the ability to conduct clinical imaging studies across multiple sites, to analyze structural imaging data with the most powerful software regardless of development site, and to test new hypotheses on large collections of subjects with well-characterized image and clinical data. Through large-scale analyses of patient population data acquired and pooled across sites, we are investigating neuroanatomic correlates of Alzheimer's Disease Depression and Mild Cognitive Impairment subjects. This paper describes progress in multi-site image calibration and in software integration for multi-site image processing.

1. Introduction

The Biomedical Information Research Network (Birn, www.nbirn.net) is a National Institute of Health consortium in the USA comprised of 26 research groups that aims to create technical infrastructure and guidelines to enable acquisition, databasing, sharing, analysis and mining of multi-institutional biomedical data [1]. In it's first phase Birn is focused on clinical neuroscience through the coordinated work of the following testbeds: Functional Imaging Research in Schizophrenia Testbed Birn (integration and analysis of functional MRI data), Mouse Birn (integration of multi-scale neuroimaging and genetic data from mouse models of neurological and psychiatric disorders), Birn Coordinating Center (support for network infrastructure, grid computing, data integration, interaction environments and general coordination of the project), and Brain Morphometry Birn (discussed in this paper).