Gradually, in laboratories around the world, neuroscientists from diverse disciplines are exploring various aspects of brain structure. Since there is so much research to be done on the nervous system, neuroscientists must specialize. An undesirable result of this specialization is that it is difficult for individual neuroscientist to investigate how their results fit together with results from other scientists. Moreover, they sometimes duplicate research efforts since there is no easy way to share information.
To enhance the work of neuroscientists, we propose a zoomable database
of images of the brain tissue. We begin with the acquisition of 3D
structural maps of the nervous system using high-field,
high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The MR images show
the entire brain in a single dataset and preserve spatial
relationships between structures within the brain. However, even high
resolution MRI cannot show individual cells within the brain. We
therefore anchor confocal microscope images to these 3D brain maps.
Because of their higher resolution, the confocal images are of smaller
regions of the brain. Many such images are montaged into larger images
by aligning cellular landmarks between images.
These
montages are then aligned with structural landmarks from the MR
images, so the high-resolution images can be anchored accurately
within the MR image. In addition to the image data, other types of
brain data can be linked to the 3D structure.
This paper focuses on the system requirements for the interface to this database. Section 2 of this paper describes related work. Section 3 introduces the user requirements for the database interface. Section 4 predicts the network requirements based on the user requirements. Section 5 details predicted network benefits from compression. Section 6 describes the disk requirements. Section 7 presents the processor requirements. Section 8 explores quality considerations. And section 9 summarizes possible topology considerations and lists future work.