The system manages all aspects of research where people are more likely than machines to make mistakes, such as keeping track of data and code for analyses, storing information, and producing visualizations.
The new paper provides a "case study" on how to generate a full research study, including data collection, analysis and visualization, on the brainlife.io platform. It also describes how the system preserves data and analyses in a single digital record to create reusable research assets for other scientists to use in their work.
"I like to refer to the new technology as a process of 'data upcycling,'" Pestilli said. "The new records that scientists create and share on brainlife.io can be easily reused by others to go beyond the goals of the original study."
For example, a study on traumatic brain injury could potentially combine data from a study on Alzheimer's disease to understand underlying biological mechanisms in both conditions.
Importantly, Pestilli added, brainlife.io is designed to store and process data derived from diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging - a form of imaging that uses water molecules in the brain to create a highly detailed roadmap of the nerve tracks in the brain - as well as tractography, a 3D modeling technical to visually represent these nerves and understand the network of connections that make up the brain.
"The use these imaging techniques has revolutionized knowledge about networks inside the brain and the impact of the brain's white matter on human behavior and disease," Pestilli said. It also generates enormous amounts of data that require serious computer resources to store and analyze.
Some of this computing power comes from Microsoft, which chose brainlife.io as one of the first eight projects to benefit from the company's initiative to award $3 million in compute credits to projects under the NSF's Big Data Spokes and Planning projects, of which IU is a part. The project is also supported under the NSF's BRAIN Initiative, a federal project to generate new physical and conceptual tools to understand the brain.
MEDICA-tradefair.com; Source: Indiana University