Big Data on Real-World Applications. Chapter 5: PESSCARA: An Example Infrastructure for Big Data Research

Abstract

Big data requires a flexible system for data management and curation which has to be intuitive, and it should also be able to execute non-linear analysis pipelines suitable to handle with the nature of big data. This is certainly true for medical images where the amount of data grows exponentially every year and the nature of images rapidly changes with technological advances and rapid genomic advances. In this chapter, we describe a system that provides flexible management for medical images plus a wide array of associated metadata, including clinical data, genomic data, and clinical trial information. The system consists of open-source Content Management System (CMS) that has a highly configurable workflow, has a single interface that can store, manage, enable curation, and retrieve imaging-based studies, and can handle the requirement for data auditing and project management. Furthermore, the system can be extended to interact with all the modern big data analysis technologies.