Columbia University, Department of Neurology
Jason Steffener is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at Columbia University with a background in biomedical engineering. He is a member of the BIRN Steering Committee and shares his experience with BIRN.
1. What biomedical research project are you involved with and could you please describe it?
Our division focuses on the study of healthy cognitive aging through cognitive neuroimaging experiments. Our overall goals are to understand age-related structural and functional brain changes as measured with MRI and the relationship between the neural measures and cognitive performance.
2. What challenges are you facing?
The main problems are data handling and quality assessment issues for the multiple large studies we are running.
3. How did you hear about BIRN?
Through on-line searches for methods to database MRI data.
4. How did you make contact with us?
I submitted a request for more information through the on-line form on the BIRN website. I was promptly emailed to schedule a time for a phone conversation, which occurred within one week.
5. What BIRN capabilities have you been working with and how have they affected your research?
I have been working with the human imaging database (HID) tools and the MRI quality assurance methods. In understanding and implementing the HID we are now better organized and can more reliably keep track of the status and quality of our MRI data and the individual project progressions.
6. What other capabilities – current or developing – are you interested in? What other needs would you like to see addressed?
I am interested in MRI data provenance and storage of derived data. Currently, there is no reliable method for keeping track of what processing steps have occurred on brain imaging files. Nor are there methods for storing MRI data that has been processed and/or analyzed. The current approaches are only capable of storing raw data. In order to store derived data measures, the provenance information is needed so these two needs go hand-in-hand.
