BRAID: Brain Image Database

The BRAin Image Database (BRAID) is a large-scale archive of normalized digital spatial and functional data with an analytical query mechanism. One of its many applications is the elucidation of brain structure-function relationships. BRAID stores spatially defined data from digital brain images which have been mapped into normalized Cartesian coordinates, allowing image data from large populations of patients to be combined and compared. The database also contains neurological data from each patient and a query mechanism that can perform statistical structure-function correlations.

The BRAID project is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health . The BRAID project is developing database technology for the manipulation and analysis of 3-dimensional brain images derived from MRI, PET, CT, etc. BRAID is based on the PostgreSQL server, an object/relational DBMS, which allows a standard relational DBMS to be augmented with application-specific datatypes and operators. The BRAID project is adding operations and datatypes to support querying, manipulation and analysis of 3D medical images, including:

Image Datatypes

BRAID supports a family of 3D image datatypes, each having an abstract type and an implementation type. Abstract types include boolean (for regions of interest), integer, float, vector (for representing morphological changes), tensor (for representing derivatives and standard deviations of vector images) and color. Implementation types at present include line-segment format and voxel array.

Image Operators

BRAID supports addition of images, multiplication (which is interpreted as intersection for boolean images), coercion of an image's abstract or implementation type to another value, and determination of volumes of regions of interest.

Statistical Operators

A chi-squared test has been added to SQL as an aggregate operator on pairs of boolean values.

Web Interface

A general-purpose Web gateway allows the results of queries that return computed images to be displayed.