Russ, this sounds like a nice approach.  I particularly like the
editable lab notebook aspect.  

Regarding the lightweight vs. heavyweight issue, it's useful to consider
a group's requirements in helping to decide which is most appropriate.
If you need searching, integration with non-imaging measures,
upload/download of images, automated image processing, report
generation, visualization, etc., you're going to need a 'heavyweight'
solution like XNAT.  For easy organization of acquisition and study
info, the wiki approach seems quite nice.

-Dan Marcus

-----Original Message-----
From: Russell Poldrack [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 8:55 AM
Subject: Re: Database all MRI and NeuroPsych data

this is indeed a tough problem.  Systems like xNAT are nice but they  
are quite heavyweight and require a good bit of technical support.  we  
have taken a more lightweight approach and used a wiki system.  I  
wrote some scripts (which I am happy to share) that are integrated  
into our preprocessing script, which automatically create a wiki page  
for each subject which includes lots of information from the DICOM  
headers.  (note that we do not include any identifying information   
such as name or birthday in the scanning codes or in this wiki, so  
there is no potential for breach of confidentiality.) Each of these  
pages has sections that allow linking of behavioral data and other  
information.  We then organize the pages by funding source and study;  
for each study I ask the person running it to write a description of  
the methods (which is meant to serve as a template for the methods  
section of the paper when it is written), to upload and link all  
programs used to run and score the experiment, and then to outline the  
locations and purposes of all analyses. In this sense it becomes an  
online lab notebook that I can access for all of our studies.  
Unfortunately I can't allow open access but I am happy to provide more  
information.

cheers
rp


On Jan 2, 2008, at 6:19 AM, Jason Steffener wrote:

> Hello all.
> I hope that all have had a safe and great new years.
>
> I am looking for advice and maybe to start a conversation on the  
> organization of data. I am wondering what methods other labs use to  
> organize and provide an efficient means of searching a large  
> database which contains:
> MRIs/Neuropsych/Demographics.
>
> I am just wondering what means people use to organize MRI data,  
> organize by study, by subject,  etc... Then what means to database  
> the neuropsych and demographics so that they are easily linked to  
> the MRI data.
>
> We have something in place but as we grow I am looking for a more  
> efficient setup.
>
> Thank you for any tips and advice.
>
> Jason.

---
Russell A. Poldrack, Ph.d.
Associate Professor
Wendell Jeffrey and Bernice Wenzel Term Chair in Behavioral Neuroscience
UCLA Department of Psychology
Franz Hall, Box 951563
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563

phone: 310-794-1224
fax: 310-206-5895
email: [log in to unmask]
web: www.poldracklab.org