Special section: Medical imaging on grids

Medical image computing is raising new challenges related to the scale and complexity of the required data manipulation. Challenging situations can be found, for example, on studies that require the federation and analysis of large data sets (e.g., on Alzheimer’s disease [1]), on applications that need to simulate complex models (e.g. radiotherapy simulation) or on large or complex image processing pipelines (e.g., functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging [2]). Today, researchers and clinical practitioners alike face the need to enhance their IT infrastructure to properly organize and perform such image computing tasks. Grid technology is addressing problems related to large data manipulation over wide computing networks, providing tools for exchanging data and computing power [3]. Additionally, grids are serving as a vector for structuring user communities, as they enable and facilitate collaboration across the boundaries of enterprizes and nations. As such, grid technology has been considered an interesting foundational layer to address several challenges in the medical image computing area. In the literature several successful reports can be found where grids have been adopted in various medical imaging applications, for example to build and simulate patientspecific models [4], to reduce computing time or deploy services in advanced clinical applications [5,6], to facilitate the validation and optimization of algorithms [7], or to gather information and expertise on unusual cases or rare diseases [8]. Moreover, grid initiatives for medical imaging are emerging worldwide. From the early days of MammoGrid [9] and e-Diamond [10], two pioneering grids for mammography and breast cancer, and BIRN [11], the first initiative in neuroimaging, many other projects have followed that involve or are fully dedicated to medical imaging on grids. A few of such ongoing projects are caBiG (US) [12], NeuGrid (EU) [13], Health-echild (EU) [8], MEDIGRID (DE) [14], TRENCADIS (SP) [15], MAGIC-5