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Flywheel > Case Studies > CMU-Pitt BRIDGE Center Standardizes on BIDS with Flywheel’s Research Platform
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CMU-Pitt BRIDGE Center Standardizes on BIDS with Flywheel’s Research Platform

Technology Category
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
  • Education
  • Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
  • Product Research & Development
  • Quality Assurance
Use Cases
  • Clinical Image Analysis
Services
  • Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
  • Data Science Services
The Challenge
The Brain Imaging Data Generation and Education Center (BRIDGE) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) has been an early adopter of BIDS' (Brain Imaging Data Structure). BIDS is an increasingly adopted standard of data organization that allows researchers to more easily share neuroimaging data and software tools across the broad range of research conducted by users scanning at their facilities. The BRIDGE Center leadership sees this technology for standardizing (i.e. organizing, annotating, and describing) data as an important facilitator for replicable analyses and advancing research collaboration to speed discovery. The need for efficient data practices became more evident when the Center decided to purchase another 3-Tesla MRI system in 2019, a decision that would greatly increase the amount of data acquired at the Center.
About The Customer
The Brain Imaging Data Generation and Education Center (BRIDGE) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a joint MR research center serving both universities. The center was established in 2018 and has been an early adopter of the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS), a standard for data organization that facilitates the sharing of neuroimaging data and software tools. The center's leadership team includes Co-Directors Dr. Tim Verstynen (CMU) and Dr. Walt Schneider (CMU), Steering Committee Chair Dr. Julie Fiez (Pitt), and Scientific Operations Director Dr. John Pyles (CMU). The center's researchers collect MRI data, but before the implementation of BIDS, they lacked a standard, easy-to-use means to access, process, and share their data.
The Solution
The BRIDGE Center decided to standardize on BIDS with Flywheel's Research Platform. Flywheel automates data collection from the BRIDGE Center's Siemens MRI systems. The BRIDGE Center specified a naming convention used by all researchers for their MRI protocols. Once data is acquired, it is immediately and automatically encrypted and securely transferred to a Flywheel cloud instance controlled by the BRIDGE Center. Because of the standard naming convention, the files and associated metadata are automatically curated to the BIDS standard when they arrive in the cloud. Next, quality control and BIDS preprocessing pipelines are automatically scheduled and run. Finally, each data set is checked for completeness and a summary of the project status can be accessed by researchers in Flywheel.
Operational Impact
  • Standardization of data acquisition, computation, and sharing using the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS).
  • Automatic encryption and secure transfer of data to a Flywheel cloud instance controlled by the BRIDGE Center.
  • Automatic curation of files and associated metadata to the BIDS standard.

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