Neuroimaging and EEG research invariably produces large volumes of data. The additional demands of coordinating multiple research projects involving large numbers of subjects motivate the development of a principled platform for integration and data storage. The aim of the NIC Application Server and Workflow Project is to create a system for storing experimental and computational data related to brain imaging. The server is backed by a database and library interface that holds artifacts from imaging and computational studies. This data is processed using a simple workflow engine that matches the inputs and outputs of the various steps of a research protocol. Our current target is in the storage and processing of the Oregon Normals Database. This database will contain Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Dense Array Electroencephalography (EEG) as source data that is used in the creation of realistic head models that can be used to perform source localization based on EEG data.
The server software stack consists of Postgres for data storage, the NIC Iconic Grid as a computational resource, and a Glassfish Servers with servlets serving HTML, XML, and other data files. The interface uses a REST (Representation State Transfer) architecture with both session and OAuth based authentication to allow for human and automated machine interaction.