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Streamlining Data Management for Precision Medicine at an Imaging Core

Flywheel served as a secure, centralized data management solution at a translational research center to store data for labs using a variety of imaging modalities, including MR, CT, and PET. Researchers studying individualization of cancer therapies adopted Flywheel as their data management platform to securely organize multimodal imaging and streamline remote data access and processing.

Managing Multimodal Imaging

Researchers at the center were working to develop novel imaging technologies to improve cancer treatment success by combining molecular imaging, imaging biomarkers, and biological data to help select the therapy that best matches an individual’s needs. 

Prior to Flywheel, researchers at the imaging core were using decentralized data structures that were difficult to access. But with Flywheel in place, MR, CT, PET, and MSOT data from Bruker, Mediso, and Siemens devices were automatically captured and stored. Data was organized by a standard research hierarchy of groups, projects, sessions, and acquisitions. All data, metadata, and results were searchable and could be added to collections for further analysis.

Data was instantly accessible to researchers in the office or at home after acquisition, with images able to be downloaded for local processing or run within Flywheel. With Flywheel installed, researchers easily accessed and immediately analyzed their data to deliver results faster so that optimal treatments could be more quickly developed.

Integrated Data Viewing

Imaging core administrators were able to use Flywheel to visually inspect images for quality and browse images for sharing. Data could be qualitatively viewed via the Flywheel web interface, with DICOM header information available for context about an acquisition and further processing.

With Flywheel, researchers at the center quickly and securely accessed and shared data.  Instead of spending time finding and organizing data from different equipment and systems, they increased their research productivity to enable improved quality of cancer care.