What is the EBRAINS Medical Data Analytics Service?

The growing need to increase the capacity to share health data to accelerate progress in clinical neuroscience and medicine, is illustrated by the numerous initiatives aiming at collating big data. Promotion of data sharing and the implementation of standardised harmonisation rules reduces the burden of unexploited research and plays a critical role in mitigating the problems of reduced sample sizes.

The Medical Data Analytics Service provides two unique EBRAINS platforms, covering key areas in clinical neuroscientific research

  • The Medical Informatics Platform (MIP), federating de-centralised large clinical datasets (development started in 2013)
  • The Human Intracerebral EEG Platform (HIP), dedicated to centralised human intracerebral EEG (iEEG) data (development started in 2020)

The Medical Data Analytics Service aims to leverage and maximise international use and re-use of medical data.

 

Human Intracerebral EEG Platform - HIP

Vision of the HIP?

The Human Intracerebral EEG Platform (HIP) is a platform for state-of-the-art processing and international sharing of human intracerebral EEG data. The HIP development started in 2020, aiming to tackle the big challenge of data fragmentation and heterogeneity of clinical data.

It is an open-source platform designed to provide the clinical and scientific community access to the largest and most advanced solution for storing, curating, sharing, and analysing of multiscale neurophysiological data directly recorded from the human brain.

The HIP is fully integrated in EBRAINS, providing tools and services in brain research and brain-inspired technologies.

Image: Use of HiBoP on the HIP for 3D visualisation of evoked potentials (CHUV, UGA, AMU and UCLB collaboration)



Access to HIP and Services

The HIP development is continuing, users will get access to its services very soon. 



HIP tools and services

  • Provide unprecedented access to Human iEEG data from more than 70 clinical centres worldwide. iEEG data are only recorded in patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy or deep brain stimulation in a limited number of clinical centres

  • Increase international data interoperability, accessibility, availability and affordability of high-quality imagery, curation and analysis tools

  • Data covering the entire field of the iEEG-based research (multi-scale investigation of cognition, consciousness, connectivity and their disorders, epilepsy and seizure biomarkers)

  • Access for researchers to well curated open access “public” iEEG data (made available in the EBRAINS Knowledge Graph)

  • Linkage to the EBRAINS Brain Atlases and the Virtual Brain (TVB)

  • 3-tier architecture: the client and server side applications, tools and services, will be executed and operated on remote server instances

  • Provide remote storage resources accessible through native system clients, e.g. as remote network drives

  • Use a collection of novel technologies to provide excellent GPU performance

  • HIP primarily relies on BIDS as a common data format, but accommodates various other data formats

  • All HIP data will be included in the international HIP Registry, providing a sustained regulatory framework

 

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HIP Library – HIP In-Browser-Apps

The embedded library of supporting domain specific tools (in-browser apps) and workflows and the integration of various HIP functionalities with other EBRAINS services (e.g. the EBRAINS Knowledge Graph (Data and Knowledge), the Multilevel Human Brain Atlas (Atlases), The Virtual Brain (Simulation) with Showcase 2 or the EBRAINS HPC centres) will provide users with the exceptional experience of a desktop environment, minimising the complexity of iEEG and neuroimaging data curation, processing and analyses in an innovative way.

The HIP handles BIDS iEEG databases that are connected to a library of open source software solutions such as:

  • BIDS manager
  • Anywave
  • FreeSurfer
  • Brainstorm
  • SPM

 



HIP demo