A database of brain neuroanatomic volumetric observations spanning various species, diagnoses, and structures for both individual and group results. A major thrust effort is to enable electronic access to the results that exist in the published literature. Currently, there is quite limited electronic or searchable methods for the data observations that are contained in publications. This effort will facilitate the dissemination of volumetric observations by making a more complete corpus of volumetric observations findable to the neuroscience researcher. This also enhances the ability to perform comparative and integrative studies, as well as metaanalysis. Extensions that permit pre-published, non-published and other representation are planned, again to facilitate comparative analyses. Design strategy: The principle organizing data structure is the "publication". Publications report on "groups" of subjects. These groups have "demographic" information as well as "volume" information for the group as a whole. Groups are comprised of "individuals", which also have demographic and volume information for each of the individuals. The finest-grained data structure is the "individual volume record" which contains a volume observation, the units for the observation, and a pointer to the demographic record for individual upon which the observation is derived. A collection of individual volumes can be grouped into a "group volume" observation; the group can be demographically characterized by the distribution of individual demographic observations for the members of the group.

Details