TCIA: An information resource to enable open science.

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Medical Imaging
• Bioinformatics
• Open Science

Background:

• Reusable, publicly available data is crucial for advancing open science.
• The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) serves as a dedicated open image archive for cancer research.
• TCIA facilitates cancer research by providing curated, de-identified imaging data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the infrastructure and impact of The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA).
• To highlight TCIA's role in supporting open science communities in oncology.
• To showcase the growth and utilization of TCIA as a research resource.

Main Methods:

• TCIA collects, de-identifies, and curates diverse oncology image datasets.
• Data is contributed by multiple institutions and made publicly available.
• User access is managed through registration, with support for research communities via wiki and metadata repositories.

Main Results:

• TCIA has datasets from 28 institutions, with more collections in progress.
• Over 2,000 users have registered since June 2011.
• TCIA currently enables over 40 active research projects and has supported 39 publications/presentations.

Conclusions:

• TCIA is a successful, freely available resource that significantly supports cancer research.
• The archive's infrastructure and data accessibility foster open science and community collaboration.
• TCIA's impact is demonstrated by the number of active projects and research outputs it enables.