CTSC:TTIC.031709

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Agenda

1. Imaging Consultation (update on Dodson-lingual nerve imaging and Freedman-inflammation imaging)
2. Hiring of the XNAT engineer (special guest, Shawn Murphy)
3. Update on i2b2 project
4. Catalyst deputies meeting
5. Consultation tracking system
6. Update on installation of physiological monitoring systems for fMRI.
7. Imaging boot camp

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes March 17, 2009

In attendance:

• Gordon Williams
• Randy Gollub
• Gordon Harris
• Clare Tempany
• Bill Hanlon
• Valerie Humblet
• Stephan Voss
• Bob Lenkinski
• Simon Warfield
• Neil Rofsky
• Bruce Rosen
• Ron Kikinis
• Shawn Murphy (Associate Director of the Laboratory of Computer Science at MGH)

1. Consultation requests submitted through the Catalyst website

• Valerie gave the group an update on the two on-going imaging consultations.
  • Bob will coordinate the imaging of the lingual nerve at BIDMC
  • Neil will continue to research technique to image liver inflammation and will keep the investigator updated.

2. Hiring of the XNAT engineer

• Gordon Williams stressed the importance of hiring someone quickly, before the end of year one. That leaves us until April 1st to get this person on the payroll.
• All the interviewers were present during the t-con and discussed the strengths of the candidates. The Imaging Consortium agreed that all the candidates have tremendous expertise and would be strong addition to the team.
• The engineer will be hired through Children's Hospital with Simon as supervisor. Randy offered to take care of the logistics related to the position (weekly meetings, ...).

3. Update on i2b2 program

• Shawn Murphy, Associate Director of the Laboratory of Computer Science at MGH was a special guest on the t-con. He was invited to give his feedback on the candidates interviewed for the XNAT engineer position.
• During the meeting, he also gave a brief presentation of the i2b2 project and its implication for the integration of imaging data. The XNAT platform will be tied into the i2b2 infrastructure of the CTSC through web services typically available in the i2b2 Hive. This will allow the images and image data of XNAT to be merged with the phenotype and genotype data of the CTSC i2b2 Hive, thereby creating a complete and cohesive clinical research chart. A further benefit, enabled by the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC), is to supply the clinical translational community with robust, open source solutions for medical image analysis, visualization and management software tools by the creation of a “desktop” version of XNAT. The desktop XNAT data management software will provide a state of the art management of medical image data for the individual clinical translational research scientist. It is being developed to integrate and interoperate with a number of the key image analysis software tools, including Slicer 3 and Freesurfer, in use by the Harvard CTSC community.

4. Catalyst deputies meeting

• Valerie has been invited by Catalyst Central to be part of the Catalyst Deputies Committee, a monthly standing committee.
  • This group will meet regularly on topics that will include, but are not limited to: informatics needs, regulatory barriers and/or questions, preparation of the annual NIH Progress Report and semi-annual External Advisory Board briefing books, program evaluation strategies, financial questions, sharing best practices, program special events, communications and new program functionality.
  • The members should think about what our program needs from Harvard Catalyst Central that it’s not getting. For example Clare asked about support for teleconference from BWH.

5. Consultation tracking system

• Friday March 20 at 2 pm in Coutnway, Valerie and Randy are attending a meeting about the consultation tracking system.
• Currently, the consulting services that are offered on the Catalyst website use a web-based form to collect consulting needs from the investigators. As a temporary measure, the data collected on the webform are provided to the triage person(s) in an excel spreadsheet; however, a system is needed to track a consulting task to completion. The purpose of this meeting is to provide a proposal for the consulting tracking system, which will provide a workflow-based solution, and should be configurable to handle some reporting requirements for program evaluation. While initially we would like to roll out the tool on a program-by-program basis, we believe it will also be extendable to a single-point-of-service model over time.

6. Update on installation of physiological monitoring systems for fMRI.

• We identified a specific C/T medical imaging technology need common across many of our sites that could be supported by our program- concurrent physiological data acquisition for fMRI scanning.
• Valerie, the biomedical imaging engineers at MGH, Drs. Giorgio Bonmassar and Vitaly Napadow, and Greg Boulet (sales manager for AD instruments) are working collaboratively with the lead biomedical engineers at BWH, BIDMC, MIT, Children's and Harvard to install identical digital physiological monitoring systems (e.g. measures heart rate, respiratory rate, and skin conductance, with potential to add additional measures as needed at each site) in one of their fMRI scanner bays and resolve any technological issues that arise in obtaining good quality signals in the hostile high magnetic field environment.
• Five systems were received earlier this month and were handed to the MGH, BWH, MIT, BIDMC and Harvard. The system for Children's Hospital has been ordered and will be shipped next month.
• During a 2 days visit, Greg Boulet gave the end users a formal training on the monitoring system and the software. Users not able to attend these sessions will have access to on-line tutorial and eventually one-on-one session with either Valerie, Vitaly or Giorgio depending on the complexity of their request.
• Right now Valerie, Giorgio and Vitaly are collecting data from all sites to order cables, etc needed for the installation of the monitoring system in the scanner rooms.
• A link has been created on this WIKI page: Information for users where one can find all the informations about the monitoring system (specifications, training,...)

7. Imaging boot camp

• Valerie talked to Amy Webber, Event Coordinator for Catalyst Central about the imaging boot camp. It is still a work in progress. It will be an invitation only event with a mix of senior faculties involved in imaging and other fields. The goal is to show people not involved with imaging how they could use imaging as a research tool. The invitations will be sent in the coming months.