Living Human Digital Library: interactive digital library services to access collections of complex biomedical data on the musculoskeletal apparatus (LHDL)

Project Id

IST-2004-026932

Abstract

LHDL will develop the infrastructure, based on state-of-the-art ICT systems, to support the Living Human Project aimed at the creation of a worldwide, distributed repository of anatomo-functional data and of simulation algorithms, directly accessible by any researcher in the world.

Keywords

eHealth Networks and Architectures, Web Services for Medical Domain, Data Fusion, Virtual Physiological Human, Musculo-skeletal Apparatus, Semantic Web, Grid

Description

Objectives of the project

Multiscale integration of biomedical information is becoming a clear need to solve critical problems (e.g. diagnosis, treatment planning, rehabilitation management) in dozens of clinical scenarios (e.g. bone tumours, cerebral palsy in children, large traumatic skeletal defects, paraplegia).
LHDL is aimed at developing the core ICT infrastructure to support the Living Human

Project.At the outset a community server (based on Open Source software) will be established for community building
and collaborative working. Three software independent, but strongly integrated, frameworks will be developed that will provide all the infrastructural services that the available software cannot provide.The scientific and technological objectives of the project are to create:
• a digital library specifically designed to support a virtual laboratory, with all its aspects and needs;
• an application framework for management, fusion and exchange of biomedical digital data;
• a service framework for the development, the sharing and the choreography of software services;
• knowledge-management framework to manage the repository of data, models and services

Project description

The LHDL aims to create an in silico model of the human musculo-skeletal apparatus which can predict how mechanical forces are exchanged internally and externally at any dimensional scale from the whole body down to the protein level.This model should be designed as an infrastructure that can be updated and extended whenever new data and algorithms become available. It should also account at any level for the inter-subject variability observed in the population.
The Living Human Digital library aims to develop this infrastructure.Around a community building and collaborative working server we plan to develop: an application framework for management, fusion and exchange of biomedical digital data; a service framework for the development, the sharing and the choreography of software services such as interactive extraction of iso surfaces, automatic image segmentation, automatic mesh generation, signal filtering, FE solvers, etc.; a knowledge management framework that lets you develop Internet-based services that keep all the data and algorithmic resources of the repository organised in agreement with a dynamically defined ontology, and services for advanced resource discovery and retrieval, web services choreography, and maintenance of the metadata and of the ontology.
These objectives will be pursued using four core technologies, at their maximum potential and with the highest level of integration: GRID, Semantic Web, Web Services and Data Fusion. GRID technology is required to provide high-bandwidth to large collections of coarse-grained, distributed, non-textual, multidimensional, time-varying resources.
Semantic Web technology is required to add machineunderstandable reasoning.Web Services technology is required to cope with the dynamic aspects of a digital library that provide as content, not only data, but also simulation services, collaborative work services, interactive visualisation services, etc. Data Fusion is essential for combining data coming from disparate sources into a coherent picture.

Expected Results & Impacts

The technology targeted by the LHDL project will be used to form a very large scientific repository of anatomical and functional data, by means of a continuous and autonomous contribution of each European researcher to this repository.This objective, impossible to achieve at the national level, is an indisputable step toward the creation of a European Research Area. This will provide to European researchers, clinicians, industrial engineers, and to the citizen at large, a perfect exemplification of the added value that a single ERA may provide.
Given the breadth and diversity of the areas on which biomechanics impacts, including health, ergonomics, safety, sport and leisure (mostly, it has to be said, unnoticed and unacknowledged by the general population) the effects of this project on the quality of life of the individual citizen are expected to be wide ranging. Further, given the current costs, both social and economic, of the problems that exist in these areas,the anticipated benefits in terms of personal comfort and reduction in pain,and in terms of the associated social spending are likely to be huge. Industrial exploitation will be an essential component of the project from the outset. The environment proposed has a priceless value for a number of operators in pharmaceuticals and healthcare:
being able to tap with direct research, results and even generic know-how of the community may save billions of Euro in development costs of new drugs, services or medical devices

Coordinator

• CINECA

Contacts

• Francesca Garofalo[PPL-200701-024]
  
  Detailed record - Similar records

General information

Timetable

From 02/2006 to 02/2009

Instrument

Specific Targeted Research Projects (STREP)

Website

[www.livinghuman.org]

Partners

• High Performance Systems Dept (CINECA ) (it)
• Medical Technology Lab and Movement Analysis Lab, Istituti Ortopedici Rizzoli (it)
• University of Luton, Computer Science Dept, (uk)
• Knowledge Media Institute, Open University (uk)
• Université Libre de Bruxelles , Anatomy and Embryology Dept (be)

Budget

Total cost

€ 3,238,320.00

Grants

€ 2,250,520.00 [EC]

Similar records

 

People who viewed this page also viewed:

(1)  Supporting and structuring HealthGrid Activities (1)  record ID 19 - Emmanuel Ifeachor (1)  record ID 35 - Mariola Mier (1)  Creating new knowledge in networks of medical research (MULTI-KNOWLEDGE) (1)  A Semantic Grid Browser for the Life Sciences applied to the study of Infectious Diseases (Sealife)

 

Rate this document:

Be the first to review this document.