The NDAR system includes a network of individual researchers, institutions, and research funding agencies. Five NIH institutes have contributed to the development and ongoing support of NDAR:
The NIMH has taken lead responsibility for NDAR's project management, handling contract logistics, engaging scientific expertise, and coordinating activities among the funding partners, NDAR staff, and database consumers. The CIT is spearheading the technology development.
NDAR technology is a federated data model based on the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) Grid (http://www.nbirn.net/). This environment provides the infrastructure to handle data location, access and security. The BIRN was created in 2001 to provide a collaborative working environment for biomedical researchers across the country. The BIRN consortia, now 19 universities and 26 research groups, are working on three "test bed" projects centered on brain imaging of human neurological disorders and associated animal models (brain morphometry, functional neuroimaging, and mouse models of neurological disorders). The expertise acquired through the BIRN test bed projects has been applied to NDAR, ensuring ease of access and utilization.
NDAR provides a portal which serves as a single point of entry to NDAR resources. Through the portal, data stored at the NIH will be readily accessible. Neuroimaging and genetics data can be merged with clinical and behavioral data through NDAR, allowing for cross-disciplinary "virtual teams" to conduct collaborative investigations from their home institutions.
The NDAR tools and interface to NDAR are Web-based and may be accessed by computer and a modern internet browser that supports Javascript and Java Web Start technologies. The NDAR software manages the data-location, access, and security issues as well as providing functionality that links data types (behavioral, clinical, genomic, and imaging) to allow researchers to ask questions across domains.
This page was last updated: Dec 18, 2008
