SBIR-STTR Award

The NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research is committed to implementing a ten-month initiative to create a proof-of-concept of the NITRC Image Repository (NITRC-IR). The goal of the NITRC-IR is to promote publication, indexing, and sharing of anonymized fMRI data-sets for research and testing by the Neuroscience community. When Blueprint's proof-of-concept is complete, the NITRC-IR will allow researchers who administer tools and resources on NITRC to upload and publically share data sets through an instance of the XNAT image repository engine. The purpose of this grant proposal is to extend the proof-of-concept NITRC-IR to allow and encourage a significantly wider audience of research organizations to develop and share fMRI data sets with the neuroscience community. Specifically, the proposed work includes: Allow research organizations to use NITRC-IR to index data sets that they maintain on their own public or FTP sites. This permits organizations to share data over which they would prefer to keep primary ownership. In addition, this removes the need for NITRC-IR to house all of the data it distributes, reducing operational costs per Gigabyte of distributed data. Allow research organizations to remotely store public and private data on the NITRC-IR. This encourages organizations to publically share and maintain data sets that otherwise would be costly to distribute on their own servers. Through storage of private data sets, the NITRC-IR would then allow organizations to create works-in-progress, with the intention to eventually release them to the community. Establish the commercial viability of the NITRC-IR as a federated warehouse. By exploring potential cost structures for the housing data for research organizations, we can ensure the longevity of the NITRC-IR as a resource for the neuroscience community. These goals will be met through our development of new XNAT functionality, validation of the NITRC-IR functionality by domain experts from the neuroimaging communities, and development of a long-term sustainability and cost recovery model for future and continued utilization of this resource. Together these objectives will greatly enhance the publication and distribution of neuroimaging research data sets and provide a cost-effective way for the NIH to ensure the persistence and sustainability of its investment in the community. This system will give researchers an easy, inexpensive, and open way to comply with NIH's data sharing policies without requiring NIH to invest in redundant computing infrastructure. !

Public Health Relevance:
The goal of the NITRC-IR is to promote publication, indexing, and sharing of anonymized fMRI data-sets for research and testing by the Neuroscience community. The purpose of this grant proposal is to extend the proof-of-concept NITRC-IR to: allow research organizations to use NITRC-IR to index data sets that they maintain on their own public or FTP sites;allow research organizations to remotely store public and private data on the NITRC-IR;and establish the commercial viability of the NITRC-IR as a federated warehouse. These objectives will greatly enhance the publication and distribution of neuroimaging research data sets and provide a cost-effective way for the NIH to ensure the persistence and sustainability of its investment in the community. This system will give researchers an easy, inexpensive, and open way to comply with NIH's data sharing policies without requiring NIH to invest in redundant computing infrastructure.

Thesaurus Terms:
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The NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Drug Addiction, and National Institute of Mental Health have undertaken a historic community-wide effort in their support of the funding of the Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse (NITRC) contract. Yet, NIH prefers that infrastructure type services such as NITRC Research Services become self-sustaining so that the cost burden is carried by those who use and benefit from the service itself. Our Phase 1 SBIR proposal successfully implemented a proof of concept of the proposed enhanced service NITRC Image Repository (NITRC-IR), as well as a proof of concept for an additional enhanced service, the NITRC Computational Environment (NITRCCE). The objective of this Phase 2 SBIR proposal is to create a more polished and easy-to-use set of commercially viable services that allow and encourage a significantly wider audience of researchers to share datasets, computational resources, and research results with the neuroscience community. Specifically, we propose: 1) Productization and Enhanced Services for Computation (NITRC-CE): Increase the functionality of NITRCCE through the introduction of a mobile platform, the ability for researchers to create interactive replicable demonstrations, and the ability to drag-and-drop data sets to improve the ease of conducting analyses. 2) Productization and Enhanced Services for Data and Resource Storage (NITRC-R and NITRC-IR): Introduce portlets (which allow integration of NITRC news and download functionality with external sites), support for publisher integration, expansion of public datasets, support for private datasets, and the creation of permanent identifiers for tools and resources, to facilitate reproducibility of published analyses. 3) Usability Research and Testing: Conduct usability research and update user stories for NITRC Research Services based on feedback, update prototype functionality based on feedback, facilitate heuristic evaluation of the functionality to ensure it meets the requirements as established by the updated user stories, conduct pre- and post-implementation surveys to verify willingness to pay based on proposed cost models to ensure commercial viability.

Public Health Relevance Statement:


Public Health Relevance:
The purpose of NITRC Research Services is to provide neuroscience researchers with a complete solution to the problem of sharing and finding large-scale datasets and manipulating them in high-performance computing environments. NITRC Research Services will be a framework where researchers can identify software and data and seamlessly deliver them to a cloud-based computational resource for processing. This will greatly enhance the delivery of high-performance computing to the large-scale datasets that are becoming the mainstay of neuroscience research and promote more reproducible publication practices through enhanced resource sharing.

NIH Spending Category:
Neurosciences

Project Terms:
Address; Award; base; Businesses; cloud based; Cloud Computing; Communities; Computer Analysis; Computer software; computerized data processing; computing resources; Contracts; cost; Data; Data Analyses; Data Element; Data Set; Data Storage and Retrieval; design; Drops; Drug Addiction; Ensure; Environment; Evaluation; Feedback; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Funding; Goals; heuristics; High Performance Computing; Image; improved; Informatics; innovation; Institutes; Marketing; meetings; Modeling; National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering; National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.); National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; neuroimaging; Neurosciences; Neurosciences Research; news; Performance; Persons; Phase; Policies; Polishes (substance); Price; Process; prototype; public health relevance; Publications; Publishing; repository; Reproducibility; Research; Research Infrastructure; Research Personnel; Resource Sharing; Resources; Services; sharing data; Site; Small Business Innovation Research Grant; Solutions; Surveys; symposium; System; Testing; To specify; tool; United States National Institutes of Health; Update; usability; virtual; web site; web-accessible; willingness to pay