BRAIN IMAGING and IT
Trevor Carpenter
SFC Brain Imaging Centre
Western General Hospital
SBIRC – Subject Groups
Who do we acquire imaging from:
¾ NHS Patients
– Service provision to NHS
¾ NHS Patients in Research study
– Relevant data transferred to NHS
– Informed consent obtained
¾ Volunteers
– Assumed ‘normal’
– Informed consent obtained
SBIRC – Local Networking
SBIRC – Local Networking
Local Network:
Provides to NHS –
¾ Connection to Radiology Information System of NHS
¾ DICOM send to NHS PACS
¾ DICOM Work List and DICOM Modality Step Complete
Provides to Imaging Management System –
¾ DICOM send & File System Access
Provides to Manufacturer
¾ Access to Modality Monitoring (ADSL)
DOES NOT PROVIDE –
Passing Messages from University Network to NHS
Sending Data from NHS to University Computers
SBIRC – Data Protection
¾NHS Patients
– Imaging acquired under ‘contract’
– Key Staff have honorary NHS contract
– NHS is Data Controller
– imaging data and patient details not retained
¾NHS Patients in Research study
– Study covered by research ethics approval
– NHS is Data Controller
– Imaging data retained by University
¾ Volunteers
– Study covered by research ethics approval
– University is Data Controller
– Imaging data retained by University
SINAPSE
SINAPSE
St Andrews
SINAPSE
Mission :
A single virtual national clinical imaging
research laboratory for 5.5 million people
which will be unique in the world
A virtual national training “college” for
imaging researchers of the future
NESC/SINAPSE - Anonymisation
DICOM Medical Images
– Store Patient Identifying Information
– Restrict Access
- for researcher blinding
- for data protection reasons
– Two Types of Anonymisation
- Pseudo (reversible)
- Total (irreversible)
NESC/SINAPSE - Anonymisation
Patient Identifiable
Pseudo Anonymised
Identifiers Unrecoverable
Radiographers
Image Analysts
Training Data Sets
Radiologists
Administration
Case Libraries
Clinical Scientists
Data Managers
Study PI’s
Data Publishing
NESC/SINAPSE - Anonymisation
Table Based Approach
- Overwrites DICOM entries in files
- Secure (restrict access to table)
- Risky?
lost lookup table
‘crossed wires’ (worse!)
Encryption
- Encodes DICOM entries in files
- Secure?
- Uses keys
very flexible (different keys for different roles)
eg:
Name/Address/CHI
Age/Weight
-
level 0 key
level 1 key
Risky?
Possible that in future encryption could be broken
Lost keys!!
NESC/SINAPSE - IT
Research Imaging Management System:
Would Provide Locally–
¾ Restricted Access to Data Based Upon Roles/Identity
¾ Cataloguing of Data (requirement for freedom of information)
¾ Logging of Data Access
¾ Method for inter-site data exchange/reception
¾ Local data back up
Data is Stored Anonymised
NESC/SINAPSE - IT
Research Imaging Management System:
Would Provide Nationally–
¾ Connection Between Centres for data exchange
- All transfers mediated by local/central IMS
¾ Centralised Storage for Backup and Archiving (ECDF)
- Provides ‘offsite’ backup with secure transfer/access mechanism
- Offsite archiving of completed studies
¾ Access to Compute Clusters (ECDF)
- For task farming of large datasets (multi-centre clinical trial)
- For complex modelling
¾ Data Libraries
- For developing image processing
- Standard Brains (registration targets / tissue class extraction)
- For e-learning resources / teaching
BRAIN IMAGING and IT
PI’s need to estimate likely storage requirements
- Costs included in grant
- Should be checked by ERI
Centralised Data Management and Archives
- Requires funding for front ends (grants)
- Data audits
- Requirement of some grant giving bodies
Investment in Staff
- Importance of systems admin needs to be recognised
- Costs need to be added to grants as well
THANKS
Martin Connell
Graham Ewing
Elizabeth McDowell
Ted Boyle
Prof. Joanna Wardlaw
Mandy Creighton
Dr. Sam Wilson
Rod Gibson
Dr. David Rodeiguez
Gonzalez
Gavin Grieg
Dr. Jano Van Hemert
Jean Ritchie
Orlando Richards
Mike Baker
John Blair Fish
James Veitch
SBIRC
Trevor Carpenter
Research Fellow
Email: trevor.carpenter@ed.ac.uk
Tel: 0131-537-3284
SFC Brain Imaging Research Centre
Clinical Neurosciences
Western General Hospital
Edinburgh
EH4 2XU