An Imaging Informatics Infrastructure with Collaborative Tools in a Large Scale Phase III Clinical Stroke Rehabilitation Trial

Background

With 7 clinical sites across the country and over 500 imaging studies involved, the clinical trial, Interdisciplinary Comprehensive Arm Rehabilitation Evaluation (ICARE), encounters challenges in sharing images and collaborations between different sites. To facilitate the multi-site collaboration and enhance the data management, we aim to develop an imaging informatics system.

Methods

The system features an image uploader, a zero foot-print DICOM viewer with lesion quantifying tools, a studies anonymizer, and forms for collecting quantification result. To further facilitate the multi-site collaboration, we also developed a tele-conference plug-in, a web-based publishing platform, and a structured reporting tool for storing rehabilitation information.

Conclusion

We have developed an imaging informatics system to facilitate the multi-site collaboration and enhance the research. By using the system, as shown in the figure below, the scenario of the trial will be changed. Users in different sites will upload images, analyze and discuss online, and share the information by XML within different sites.