Tool Integration and Cooperative Work Development Environment for Biomedical Engineering

Abstract

There is currently a great deal of activity within the biomedical engineering community in the area of providing tools and frameworks for analysis and visualization of biomedical data. These tools are usually developed with the aim to accomplish a single task or mission, or to work with a specific data type. Moreover, they are created with the idea that they will be used by a single user to perform the same task that they were thought for. This assertion is not always true. For example, in the planning phase of neurosurgery, it might be necessary to use data coming from different exams (3D images from a MRI and CT, 4D functional images, EEG signals); several specialists might have to cooperate at the same time, analyzing the whole dataset of a patient from a different point of view; an algorithm developed to perform a segmentation of blood vessels from a CT under some circumstances might be used on images coming from a different exam (for example from MRI) or to extract the contour of something completely different, but with a similar shape. Also for research purposes, it might be useful to compare results obtained from different algorithms or different implementations of the same algorithm. A single, comprehensive tool cannot be the solution for all user categories, because, due to the large amount of offered features, it may be too complicated to learn. A tool dedicated to a single use case, can often be used for other purposes, but might not be enough because of the lack of some functionalities. On the other hand, assuming that the Unix philosophy1 should be followed even in biomedical engineering, a standalone tool that does just one job is preferable compared to a many featured framework. Anyway this approach leads to a large number of issues related to resource optimization, coherence and non-redundancy of data, standards and provenance tracking. The aim of this study is to develop a framework that enables an easy way to add integration and collaboration features in biomedical software.