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Abstract

MrData is an iRODS based archival system for research medical imaging data. MrData was built initially to automate collection and archival of data flowing from a Siemens 9.4 Tesla MRI system but will be expanded to other devices. Of particular importance to this project was managing metadata related to human subject recruiting in a GDPR compliant manner. We chose Castellum, a Max Planck developed system specifically for managing human subject data securely and we worked with that team to integrate it with the MrData system. An additional requirement for us was “mixed use” metadata, information necessary for both subject recruiting and scientific processing. Mixed use metadata, such as handedness, is managed by Castellum but made available by MrData for scientific and archival purposes securely and without manual intervention. Our system never records any personally identifying information at the MRI scanner, so the resulting image files are never contaminated with a name, date of birth, etc. MrData is based on iRODS, gitlab, Flask, and python processes, implemented as a set of Docker microservices. The system is a mix of Docker images ranging from those completely defined by others, like davrods, to our locally implemented, python irods-client based uploader images which monitor a data landing zone, read DICOM/TWIX/etc, headers, and commit the data and metadata to iRODS. We will present an overview of this project, including current production status and future directions. We hope to hear feedback on whether some or all of this system would be usefully open-sourced.