Curation of Image Data for Medical Research

Abstract

Microfocus X-ray computed tomography (µCT) and 3D microscopy scanning create scientific data in the form images. These images are each several tens of gigabytes in size. E-Scientists in medicine require a user-friendly way of storing the data and related metadata and accessing it. Existing management systems allow computer scientists to create automatic image workflows through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs) but do not offer an easy alternative for users less familiar with programming. We present a new approach to the management and curation of biomedical image data and related metadata. Our system, Mata, uses a network file share to give users direct access to their data and also provides access to metadata. Mata also enables a variety of visualization options as required by e-Scientists in medicine.