Bridging clinical information systems and grid middleware: a Medical Data Manager

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Grid Computing
• Data Management

Background:

• The DICOM standard is crucial for medical imaging in clinical practice and widely adopted by acquisition/analysis devices.
• The EGEE grid infrastructure utilizes the Storage Resource Management (SRM) standard for file handling.
• Existing grid infrastructures present challenges for accessing and managing medical data effectively.

Purpose of the Study:

• To deploy a Medical Data Management service on the EGEE grid infrastructure.
• To bridge the gap between the DICOM standard for medical data and the SRM standard used by grid middleware.
• To enhance the accessibility and usability of medical databases for data analysis applications within a grid environment.

Main Methods:

• Developed a prototype service exposing an SRM-compliant interface to the EGEE grid middleware.
• Implemented on-the-fly transformation of SRM requests into DICOM transactions.
• Integrated grid services for user identification, file access control, and data protection.

Main Results:

• Successfully deployed a proof-of-concept Medical Data Manager on a limited-scale testbed.
• The prototype demonstrated seamless transformation of SRM requests to DICOM transactions.
• Ensured robust security through grid services for user authentication and data access control.

Conclusions:

• The Medical Data Management service simplifies access to medical databases for grid-based analysis.
• The service is compatible with clinical practices, promoting the adoption of grid infrastructures for medical applications.
• The service is slated for production deployment with the next EGEE middleware generation.