Over the past 2 years the ABCC and IAL have been working to develop and import image analysis and visualization software specifically tuned for the needs of the NCI. During this time, many open source software packages from Harvard, NIH, University of Utah, and others have been imported and combined to provide the infrastructure for analysis of 3D images derived from confocal microscopy, NMR, PET, CT, or reconstructed sonograms. At the same time, the NCI has been expanding its imaging capabilities through the whole animal imaging initiative in which the NCL and labs from DTP and CCR are involved. All of these initiatives demonstrate that medical imaging in research will continue to grow at NCI-Frederick and that enhancements in computational support will be required. In addition to medical imaging, the ABCC has received several requests for data analysis and visualization. Due to the increasing sizes of micro-array, proteomics, and SNP interaction datasets, NCI scientists are faced with the need to visualize hundreds of thousands of data points, often in multi-dimensions. As has been found in several recent cases, the computational requirements to perform such analyses far exceed the capabilities of users' local computers and assistance from the ABCC are necessary to enable the researchers to fully explore the experimental data.Recently, the NCI has convened a special group of computational specialists to take full advantage of the results being generated by NCI researchers by integrating this information via a systems biology approach. Inherent in this effort is the analysis and annotation of biological data through the use of databases, specialized programs, and visualization tools. Much of the evidence and insight for supporting tumor and disease models will come from well-annotated imaging data. This will generate even greater demands for seamless integration of existing software tools as well as development of new, highly specialized, tools for sharing knowledge between cancer researchers throughout the country.
