Taverna is used by various projects and researchers in medicine:
- Know-how Sharing Technology Based on ARC Services and Open Standards (KnowARC) - rapid iteration and large datasets on a grid for for medical imaging
- Medical Imaging and Signals Grid (MIASGrid) - workflows for MRI and mammogram analysis
- caGrid - cancer research
- EU-ADR - detecting adverse drug reactions through the exploitation of clinical data from electronic healthcare records
KnowARC¶
The Grid-enabled Know-how Sharing Technology Based on ARC Services and Open Standards (KnowARC) project is:
a Sixth Framework Programme Specific Targeted Research Project, under Priority IST-2005-2.5.4 “Advanced Grid Technologies, Systems and Services”. The operative comencement date of the project is June 1, 2006, and the planned duration is 3 years.
The objectives of the project are:
- to create a novel, powerful Next Generation Grid middleware based on NorduGrid’s ARC, widely respected for its simplicity, non-invasiveness and cost-efficiency;
- to promote Grid standardization and interoperability;
- to contribute to Grid technologies take-up, bridging the gaps between business and academia in Grid development
The KnowARC team have adopted Taverna to specify their workflows.
They have also developed the ARC plugin for Taverna.
The functionality of the ARC plugin has been demonstrated in the domain of medical imaging.
MIASGrid¶
The MIAS project examined the requirements of Medical Imaging and Signals.
The [MIASGrid]http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~irc/grid_mias-grid.html) sub-project,
took examples of those requirements and investigated how e-Science and the myGrid tools in particular could satisfy them.
The project was funded by the EPSRC for £494k and ran until April 2006.
The project produced several workflows that demonstrated the applicability of Taverna to the handling of large amounts of medical image data. The workflows made use of MATLAB and also interaction with users.
The workflows covered two domains:
- The analysis of MRI scans of knees to detect changes in cartilage
- The description and searching of a database of mammograms
EU-ADR¶
The EU-ADR project aims to develop an innovative computerised system to detect adverse drug reactions (ADRs) through the exploitation of clinical data from electronic healthcare records (EHRs). This process will rely on the usage and development of various computational techniques to analyse the EHRs in order to detect “signals” (combination of drugs and suspected adverse events that warrant further investigation). These techniques will be made available as a set of secure Web services, combining secure HTTPS connection with WS-Security user authentication.
However, to obtain final readable results, the various services must work with each other, constructing one or more workflows. An interdisciplinary team of researchers, requiring a software application that enhances workflow development in an elegant manner, will develop these workflows. The chosen platform is Taverna, which provides a very easy to use interface and strong core features for Web services interconnection and management, improving researchers’ collaboration and general system functionality. Taverna will support the remaining system components and end-user applications. In the end, the project should demonstrate that scientific and clinical evidence could quickly and directly be translated into patient safety and, thus, health benefit.
Presentation slides by Pedro Lopes describe the use of Taverna by the EU-ADR project.