Children's Research Integration System: ChRIS

Rudolph Pienaar, PhD
Technical Director
Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center

Staff Scientist
Boston Children's Hospital

Instructor in Radiology
Harvard Medical School

ChRIS is:

• [Boston's] " Children's Research Informatics System"
• a web-based research/clinical workflow manager
• and more...

• why aren't research informatics tools in more widespread clinical use?

• why is real time collaboration/sharing on medical data so 1990s?

• bridge research/clinical gap using web 2.0 metaphors
• track, share, process, collaborate

• collect and manage medical data with seamless integration with hospital systems
• process data
• visualize and interact with data
• share data
• real time collaboration

• Image analysis requires advanced scientific computing expertise

• unix commands
• disparate data and file systems
• disjointed analytical tools and modules

• lack of pipeline tools that combine processing modules, work flow integration, and a modern user interface
• high barrier to entry by non-technical users

• white matter tractography for surgical planning
• automatic brain surface reconstrution
• automatic brain volumetric segmentation
• automatic tumor detection and measurement

• specialized tools with high degree of domain knowledge
• UNIX (Linux or Mac) command line
• intimate knowledge of clusters and scheduling

• more familiar interface metaphor
  • web 2.0 "social" interaction
  • posting/sharing
• moves the burden of maintenance away from end user
• allows for mobile

• allows for advanced view rendering
• allows for sharing of images
• allows for immersive real time collaboration
• allows for post-processing of images

• collect
• manage
• analyze
• view
• collaborate

• seamlessly connect to standard PACS with Query/Retrieve
• direct access to server filesystem
• drag-n-drop from local client into server
• ssh/scp underpinning for secure network transfers

• all "data is stored in a time-based feed
• feeds are basically file-browsers
• feeds can be annotated with free form notes
• shared feeds can support comments between parties

• a "plugin" mechanism offers the ability to accept feed data and process data
• ChRIS is usually configured to communicate transparently with an HPC
• plugins are mostly non-interactive analysis pipelines
• interactivity is available as a pre-processing step

• image data in feed can be viewed directly in simple drop down window
• image data can be viewed in more sophisticated fashion with specialized viewing modes
• advanced sharing using 3rd party backends (Google Real Time API / Dropbox API)

• image data can be shared between collaborators
• Google RealTime API
• a realtime JSON object is shared and updates each viewer independently
• (akin to multi-player games)
• shared screen components (like cursor)

• ChRIS instance

• ChRIS instance

• https://fnndsc.github.io/mi2b2

• Jorge "To Be" Bernal, PhD
• Nicolas "VJ" Rannou, MSc
• Rudolph "Cat Herder" Pienaar, PhD

• Daniel "X Slicer" Haehn, PhD
• Daniel "Game On" Ginsburg, MSc

• Ellen "Doc" Grant, MD

• https://github.com/FNNDSC/chrisreloaded

• https://github.com/FNNDSC/ChRIS_API

• https://github.com/FNNDSC/viewerjs

• https://github.com/FNNDSC/mi2b2

• https://github.com/FNNDSC/vjs

• https://github.com/slicedrop

• https://goxtk.com