MRI Repository/Brown Web Site

The ticket [CS #169372] is assigned to John Bazik.

• The repository URL needs to survive all our careers.

JSB: I don't expire urls. I go to great pains to maintain old links, even for trivial stuff.

• Special consideration for the size of the database.

Primarily read only access with new data added as available.

Using (losslessly) compressed NIfTI files, a single scan of an individual totals a little under 90MB. If we were instead to post DICOMs, I think we would end up closer to 350MB per scan but that could also be compressed at a pretty great ratio. Offering both formats would be ideal; with compressed DICOMs, I think the total size per scan would be about 275MB, plus a little extra for metadata. Thus far we have on the order of 200 patients scanned from various studies, and so the database should be able to accommodate something around that scale: 50GB baseline, with the possibility to expand by an order of magnitude.

• Patient Privacy

Using Patient IDs

David is taking responsibility for privacy issues.

Is there a decoding mechanism?

• Transfer mechanism

Must be able to transfer large data blocks.

Recover and resume from network disruptions on both ends.

Encryption? Probably not.

Password protection?

• Data compression

On the fly compression? If available.

Lossless compression? Probably required.