KEYWORDS: Databases, Clinical trials, Computer aided design, Data storage, Image analysis, Radiology, Medical imaging, Computer aided diagnosis and therapy, Data backup, Data integration
In recent imaging-based clinical trials, quantitative image analysis (QIA) and computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) methods
are increasing in productivity due to higher resolution imaging capabilities. A radiology core doing clinical trials have
been analyzing more treatment methods and there is a growing quantity of metadata that need to be stored and managed.
These radiology centers are also collaborating with many off-site imaging field sites and need a way to communicate
metadata between one another in a secure infrastructure. Our solution is to implement a data storage grid with a fault-tolerant
and dynamic metadata database design to unify metadata from different clinical trial experiments and field sites.
Although metadata from images follow the DICOM standard, clinical trials also produce metadata specific to regions-of-interest
and quantitative image analysis. We have implemented a data access and integration (DAI) server layer where
multiple field sites can access multiple metadata databases in the data grid through a single web-based grid service. The
centralization of metadata database management simplifies the task of adding new databases into the grid and also
decreases the risk of configuration errors seen in peer-to-peer grids. In this paper, we address the design and
implementation of a data grid metadata storage that has fault-tolerance and dynamic integration for imaging-based
clinical trials.
KEYWORDS: Picture Archiving and Communication System, Data storage, Data backup, Human-machine interfaces, Image restoration, Data archive systems, Image processing, Information science, Image registration, Computing systems
A cross-continental Data Grid infrastructure has been developed at the Image Processing and Informatics (IPI) research
laboratory as a fault-tolerant image data backup and disaster recovery solution for Enterprise PACS. The Data Grid
stores multiple copies of the imaging studies as well as the metadata, such as patient and study information, in
geographically distributed computers and storage devices involving three different continents: America, Asia and
Europe. This effectively prevents loss of image data and accelerates data recovery in the case of disaster. However, the
lack of centralized management system makes the administration of the current Data Grid difficult. Three major
challenges exist in current Data Grid management: 1. No single user interface to access and administrate each
geographically separate component; 2. No graphical user interface available, resulting in command-line-based
administration; 3. No single sign-on access to the Data Grid; administrators have to log into every Grid component with
different corresponding user names/passwords.
In this paper we are presenting a prototype of a unique web-based access interface for both Data Grid administrators and
users. The interface has been designed to be user-friendly; it provides necessary instruments to constantly monitor the
current status of the Data Grid components and their contents from any locations, contributing to longer system up-time.
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