Communication Platform for Image Analysis and Sharing in Biology

Abstract

Image analysis is crucial to medical and biological applications. Recent advances in imaging technology have led to the demand for processing and visualizing a large amount of three-dimensional (3D) biomedical images. In addition, cloud computing has become popular for managing big data. Unfortunately, conven- tional image-processing systems either lack cloud computing services or advanced 3D processing abilities. In this paper, we present a novel cloud-based system for sharing, processing, and visualizing 3D biomedical images. Our system employs a standard web browser as a client interface that interactively communicates with high-performance servers. Thus, an inexpensive tablet PC without an advanced graphics processing unit (GPU) can be used for 3D image processing and visualization. Our system provides the sharing of limited software and hardware resources, and it allows for effective collaboration between researchers. We demonstrate the applicability and functionality of the system by examining typical case studies on biomed- ical images. We also examine the performance of our system numerically.