An Integrated e-science Analysis Base for Computation Neuroscience Experiments and Analysis
This provides neuroscientists with a tool to accelerate research on neurodegenerative diseases, but it is incremental as it builds on prior neuGRID infrastructure.
The paper tackles the challenge of efficiently visualizing, analyzing, and interpreting large neuroimaging datasets for neurodegenerative disease research by developing the N4U Analysis Base, an integrated environment that indexes and interlinks datasets, algorithms, and workflows to enable computational neuroscience experiments.
Recent developments in data management and imaging technologies have significantly affected diagnostic and extrapolative research in the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases. However, the impact of these new technologies is largely dependent on the speed and reliability with which the medical data can be visualised, analysed and interpreted. The EUs neuGRID for Users (N4U) is a follow-on project to neuGRID, which aims to provide an integrated environment to carry out computational neuroscience experiments. This paper reports on the design and development of the N4U Analysis Base and related Information Services, which addresses existing research and practical challenges by offering an integrated medical data analysis environment with the necessary building blocks for neuroscientists to optimally exploit neuroscience workflows, large image datasets and algorithms in order to conduct analyses. The N4U Analysis Base enables such analyses by indexing and interlinking the neuroimaging and clinical study datasets stored on the N4U Grid infrastructure, algorithms and scientific workflow definitions along with their associated provenance information.