From Geography to Medicine: Exploring Innerspace via Spatial and Temporal Databases

Spatial and temporal (ST) databases have traditionally been used to manage geographic data. However, the human body is another important low dimensional physical space which is extensively measured, queried and analyzed in the field of medicine. Health care is fundamental to the lives of all people, young or old, rich or poor, healthy or ill. This is an opportune time for research in this area due to the international priority to improve human health and the recent passage of health care legislation to provide electronic medical records and databases in many countries such as the United States. ST datasets in medicine include 3-D images (e.g., CT and MRI), spatial networks in the body (e.g., circulatory system), recorded for each patient at various times (per visit or frequently during hospitalization). We envision a spatio-temporal framework for monitoring health status over the long term (via dental X-rays, mammograms, etc.) or predicting when an anomalous decay or growth will change in size. An ST framework may play an important role in improving health care quality by providing answers on the progression of disease and the treatment of many pathologies (e.g., cancer). However, realizing such a framework poses significant challenges for researchers, each of which is a non-trivial task that has not been addressed by previous work. Taking on these challenges, therefore, would mark the beginning of the next fantastic voyage [2] in spatial and temporal databases.