Neuroinformatics Original Research Article

for processing, analysis, or simulation of brain data. Additionally the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) (Souza et al., 2007) strives to improve data exchange across multiple domains and platforms for medical research as well as health care initiatives. Notably, the LONI Image Data Archive (IDA) contains neuroanatomical data from nearly 30 research projects and serves as the primary repository for large studies such as the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). Data sharing has also indirectly benefi tted and affected computational neuroscientifi c tool development. As algorithms get tested on more and more diverse datasets, they evolve to become more general and robust. Data sharing has been the fi rst step in neuroinformatics research efforts and has largely been the focus of the past decade, and will continue to be so. The neuroscientifi c community is now getting ready to prepare for the next logical step – database integration (Forsberg and Roland, 2008). Most data storage facilities like the ones above, have implemented centralized repositories in proprietary formats. The challenge that the informatics community faces in the near future is the unifi cation of existing large, heterogeneous neurodatabases in a user-transparent manner. This goes above and beyond INTRODUCTION The past decade has seen an explosive rise in the volume of brain image scans for clinical, diagnostic as well as research purposes. Fortunately, the neuroimaging research community recognized early on that facilitating data sharing among collaborative research centers is the key to boosting neuroscientifi c knowledge and discovery. Drawing a parallel with genomics research which has immensely benefi tted with such data sharing strategies, a position paper (Eckersley et al., 2003) even goes far to suggest the use of public domain licensing policies, not unlike the GNU public license, for neuroscience data. The consensus on the archiving and sharing of primary neuroimaging data has fostered several large-scale initiatives: The Biomedical Informatics Resource Network (BIRN), the Morphometry and Function BIRN testbed projects (Grethe et al., 2005); The NIH MRI Study of Normal Brain Development (Pediatric MRI Study) and resulting Pediatric MRI Data Repository (Evans, 2006); and The fMRI Data Center (fMRIDC) (Van Horn et al., 2001; Van Horn and Gazzaniga, 2002). Much recently, the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) (Hurd, 2005) has initiated the development of a comprehensive experimental, clinical and translational databases, knowledge bases, atlases etc Interactive exploration of neuroanatomical meta-spaces