CTSC:TTIC.111108

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Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes November 11, 2008

In Attendance (in person):

• Randy Gollub
• Carolyn Zyloney
• Ron Kikinis
• Stephen Voss
• Bill Hanlon
• Bob Lenkinski
• Clare Tempany
• Annick D. Van den Abbeele

1. Discussion of the Harvard Catalyst Consultation Page

• There was unanimous approval for the Consultation Page
• The Consortium decided that there should be a link to each site's resources page. Each person's name should also link to their web-page. The default web page may be the Harvard White Pages. If Consortium members choose to include a link to their lab page or a personal web-page, it should be kept updated.
• Biostatistics has included a web-based consultation request form on their web-page. If it is successful, the Imaging group will later be able to add this functionality.
• The Imaging Liaison will be in charge of working on the Consultation Page for future updates

2. Physiological Monitoring System

• The goal is to install identical physiological monitoring systems at each site.
  • The CTSC Imaging Group plans on purchasing a physiological monitoring system at one of the MRI systems at each site that is interested.
  • Harvard and MIT have both requested a physiological monitoring system.
  • MGH has requested a physiological monitoring system that includes pediatric monitoring capabilities.
  • Bob Lenkinski from BIDMC and Stephan Voss from Children's Hospital have both expressed interest in setting up a physiological monitoring system at their sites as well.
  • Randy Gollub will speak with Emily Stern, who is currently updating the imaging resources at BWH, to see if there is interest in installing a physiological monitoring system at BWH.
• These physiological monitoring systems are not FDA approved for clinical use and can only be used for research purposes.
• The CTSC Imaging Consortium will provide ancillary supplies for image acquisition and physiological monitoring at each site.
• The CTSC Imaging engineers from MGH, Vitaly Napadow and Giorgio Bonmassar, will to visit each site to set up these physiological monitoring systems and provide in-service trainings to both the users and maintenance personnel.

3. Update from the November 7th CTSA Informatics Subgroup meeting in Chicago

• Bill Hanlon's notes from the meeting are available here
• The meeting was successful and there was support from that subgroup for the Imaging Consortium's proposal.

4. Informatics updates

• Concern was raised that the biggest problems the Imaging Consortium may face with the informatics proposal are policy issues rather than IT problems.
  • Steven Voss from Children's Hospital met with Nigrin to discuss issues related to image transfer. He expressed support for the proposal and inquired as to the infrastructure requirements necessary for the proposal to be carried out. However, there are still issues with image transfer between Children's Hospital and other institutions that the Imaging Consortium needs to solve.
  • The Consortium may need to meet with Sebun Winkler, the CTSC regulatory chair, to solve the regulatory issues related to Medical Imaging Informatics and Image Transfer
  • Consortium members agreed that the next step is to speak with Zak Kohane from the Informatics working group to get an update on the status of the proposal.

• Another issue that remains to be solved is how to work with non-DICOM data
  • DICOM is the standard format for imaging data
  • A number of other output formats exist and are in use at sites within the Consortium.
  • The Consortium will look into XIP. CABIG uses XIP. XNAT and Slicer both must be engineered to extend to and work with the XIP interface.
  • Dan Marcus is a resource available for us to discuss the development of XIP interoperability. Dan works at Washington University in St. Louis, at the site of XIP's construction.
  • The Harvard CTSC should ensure that we remain compatible with the national CTSC on informatics issues.

• Many of the sites represented in the Consortium have concerns over quality control of the images that are submitted into the archive.
  • Quality Control is partially the responsibility of the PI and study staff. The CTSC can educate PIs on how to ensure that they are submitting high quality de-identified data into the archive by creating guidelines.
  • The CTSC XNAT engineer can also make a QA toolbox available to assist with this task.
  • The Imaging Liaison and XNAT engineer, when hired, will be given the charge of quality control.

5. Slicer demo

• Sonia Pujol gave a demonstration of Slicer to the group. Her presentation is available (insert link here).

6. Tour of SPL

• The group took a tour of the existing SPL as well as the construction site for the new OR, MRI, PET, and CT scanners.