The Cerebral Blood Flow Biomedical Informatics Research Network (CBFBIRN) data repository

• Published in: NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Vol. 124; no. Pt B; pp. 1202 - 1207
• Main Authors: Shin, David D., Ozyurt, I. Burak, Brown, Gregory G., Fennema-Notestine, Christine, Liu, Thomas T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01-01-2016; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Bioinformatics; Biomedical research; Blood flow; Cerebral blood flow; Cerebrovascular Circulation; Data processing; Databases, Factual; Federal funding; Humans; Informatics; Information Dissemination; Information sharing; Magnetic Resonance Angiography; Magnetic resonance imaging; Medical imaging; Medical Informatics; Metadata; Methods; Neuroimaging; Physiology; Population studies; Provenance; Schizophrenia; Spin labeling; Spin Labels; Traumatic brain injury; Web browsers
• ISSN: 1053-8119; 1095-9572
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.05.059

Arterial spin labeling (ASL) MRI provides an accurate and reliable measure of cerebral blood flow (CBF). A rapidly growing number of CBF measures are being collected both in clinical and research settings around the world, resulting in a large volume of data across a wide spectrum of study populations and health conditions. Here, we describe a central CBF data repository with integrated processing workflows, referred to as the Cerebral Blood Flow Biomedical Informatics Research Network (CBFBIRN). The CBFBIRN provides an integrated framework for the analysis and comparison of CBF measures across studies and sites. In this work, we introduce the main capabilities of the CBFBIRN (data storage, processing, and sharing), describe what types of data are available, explain how users can contribute to the data repository and access existing data from it, and discuss our long-term plans for the CBFBIRN.
•We present a CBF data repository for storing, processing, and sharing ASL data.•CBFBIRN provides a framework for analysis and comparison of CBF measures across studies/sites.•The CBFBIRN supports data acquired with pulsed ASL and pseudocontinous ASL methods.•Standard CBF quantification and group analysis options are available.•CBFBIRN hosts more than 2,000 data sets from 34 different projects and is growing.