Starting 3/1/2011, the Wake Forest University (WFU) and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) teams of the CVRG began working with Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) on behalf of the Pediatric Heart Network (PHN) to develop and deploy an echocardiography imaging workflow.
Existing tools will be combined, moving data from clinical sites to the PHN data coordination center (DCC). These tools will then move data from the DCC to the Core Lab, for the lab to analyze blinded versions of the studies. The project will be led by the CVRG CardioVascular Imaging Informatics group at WFU, under the direction of Drs. Yaorong Ge and J. Jeffrey Carr.
This collaboration builds upon previous CVRG work and knowledge, creating a PHN echocardiography imaging pipeline. This pipeline works to automate clinical site image submission to the PHN, enhancing the current PHN methods. The pipeline also secures the imaging data, ensuring HIPAA compliance. Finally, the CVRG and BAH combine the pipeline with information in the PHN clinical data management software, associating clinical and imaging data for the PHN network. The tools deployed for the PHN pipeline include the Radiological Society of North America Clinical Trial Processor (RSNA CTP), the eXtensible Neuroimaging Archive Toolkit (XNAT) and portions of the Open Source Clinical Image and Object Management Toolkit (DCM4CHE). The CVRG and BAH build upon these tools, extending quality control methods developed by the CVRG for the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) and the Jackson Heart Study (JHS).