A web-based federated neuroinformatics model for surgical planning and clinical research applications in epilepsy

There is an increasing need to efficiently share diverse clinical and image data among different clinics, labs, and departments of a medical center enterprise to facilitate better quality care and more effective clinical research. In this paper, we describe a web-based, federated information model as a viable technical solution with applications in medical refractory epilepsy and other neurological disorders. We describe four such online applications developed in a federated system prototype: surgical planning, image analysis, statistical data analysis, and dynamic extraction, transforming, and loading (ETL) of data from a heterogeneous collection of data sources into an epilepsy multimedia data warehouse (EMDW). The federated information system adopts a three-tiered architecture, consisting of a user-interface layer, an application logic layer, and a data service layer. We implemented two complementary federated information technologies, i.e., XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), in the prototype to enable multimedia data exchange and brain images transmission. The preliminary results show that the federated prototype system provides a uniform interface, heterogeneous information integration and efficient data sharing for users in our institution who are concerned with the care of patients with epilepsy and who pursue research in this area.