A metadata-aware application for remote scoring and exchange of tissue microarray images

BMC Bioinformatics

Lorna Morris³  Andrew Tsui²  Charles Crichton²  Steve Harris²  Peter H Maccallum³  William J Howat³  Jim Davies²  James D Brenton¹  Carlos Caldas¹ 

[1] Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, Cambridge, CB2 2QQ, UK

[2] Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QD, UK

[3] Department of Oncology, University of Cambridge and Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute, Li Ka Shing Centre, Cambridge, CB2 0RE, UK

关键词: Software;    XML;    Metadata;    TMA;    Tissue microarray;   

Others  :  1087888
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2105-14-147

 received in 2013-02-08, accepted in 2013-04-23,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Background

The use of tissue microarrays (TMA) and advances in digital scanning microscopy has enabled the collection of thousands of tissue images. There is a need for software tools to annotate, query and share this data amongst researchers in different physical locations.

Results

We have developed an open source web-based application for remote scoring of TMA images, which exploits the value of Microsoft Silverlight Deep Zoom to provide a intuitive interface for zooming and panning around digital images. We use and extend existing XML-based standards to ensure that the data collected can be archived and that our system is interoperable with other standards-compliant systems.

Conclusion

The application has been used for multi-centre scoring of TMA slides composed of tissues from several Phase III breast cancer trials and ten different studies participating in the International Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC). The system has enabled researchers to simultaneously score large collections of TMA and export the standardised data to integrate with pathological and clinical outcome data, thereby facilitating biomarker discovery.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Morris et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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