The MammoGrid project has recently delivered its first proof-of-concept prototype using a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based Grid application to enable distributed computing spanning national borders. The underlying AliEn Grid infrastructure has been selected because of its practicality and because of its emergence as a potential open source standards-based solution for managing and coordinating distributed resources. The resultant prototype is expected to harness the use of huge amounts of medical image data to perform epidemiological studies, advanced image processing, radiographic education and ultimately, tele-diagnosis over communities of medical 'virtual organisations'. The Mam-moGrid prototype comprises a high-quality clinician visualization workstation used for data acquisition and inspection, a DICOM-compliant interface to a set of medical services (annotation, security, image analysis, data storage and querying services) residing on a socalled 'Grid-box' and secure access to a network of other Grid-boxes connected through Grid middleware. This paper outlines the MammoGrid approach in managing a federation of Grid-connected mammography databases in the context of the recently delivered prototype and will also describe the next phase of prototyping.
SummaryObjectives: Grid-based technologies are emerging as potential solutions for managing and collaborating distributed resources in the biomedical domain. Few examples exist, however, of successful implementations of Grid-enabled medical systems and even fewer have been deployed for evaluation in practice. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the use in clinical practice of a Grid-based imaging prototype and to establish directions for engineering future medical Grid developments and their subsequent deployment. Method: The MammoGrid project has deployed a prototype system for clinicians using the Grid as its information infrastructure. To assist in the specification of the system requirements (and for the first time in healthgrid applications), use-case modelling has been carried out in close collaboration with clinicians and radiologists who had no prior experience of this modelling technique. A critical qualitative and, where possible, quantitative analysis of the MammoGrid prototype is presented leading to a set of recommendations from the delivery of the first deployed Grid-based medical imaging application. Results: We report critically on the application of software engineering techniques in the specification and implementation of the MammoGrid project and show that use-case modelling is a suitable vehicle for representing medical requirements and for communicating effectively with the clinical community. This paper also discusses the practical advantages and limitations of applying the Grid to real-life clinical applications and presents the consequent lessons learned. Conclusions:The work presented in this paper demonstrates that given suitable commitment from collaborating radiologists it is practical to deploy in practice medical imaging analysis applications using the Grid but that standardisation in and stability of the Grid software is a necessary pre-requisite for successful healthgrids. The MammoGrid prototype has therefore paved the way for further advanced Grid-based deployments in the medical and biomedical domains.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.