Collaborations

The Biomedical Imaging Team (BIT) is a part of the Center for Childhood Cancer and the Biopathology Center (BPC) [insert hyperlink to the BPC’s website] at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital. BIT collaborates with multiple national organizations, research institutes, academic medical centers, and private companies including:
 

The Children's Oncology Group (COG) is the world's largest and most recognized pediatric cancer research collaborative. The COG includes more than 5,000 members who are located at more than 200 leading children's hospitals, university hospitals and cancer centers in North America, Australia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Over the past five years, the COG has completed successful clinical trials that have advanced treatment outcomes in a number of important areas and have directly changed the clinical practice standards for some diseases.
The BIT works with expert pathologists within the COG to digitize a variety of childhood cancers for research and educational purposes. The BIT is also working on the development and testing of image analysis algorithms to assist pathologists with the identification and quantification of cancerous features in whole slide images.

The Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) is a non-profit organization with the purpose of promoting excellence in the quality and integrity of clinical and basic scientific research in the field of Gynecologic malignancies. The Group is committed to maintaining the highest standards in clinical trials development, execution, analysis and distribution of results. Continuous evaluation of our processes is utilized in order to constantly improve the quality of patient care.

BIT works with expert pathologists within the GOG to digitize a variety of female pelvic malignancies. Currently the GOG utilizes the Virtual Imaging for Pathology, Education & Research (VIPER) application for review of pathology cases. The BIT is also working on the development and testing of image analysis algorithms to assist pathologists with the identification and quantification of cancerous features in whole slide images.

The Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN) is a group of six member institutions, supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), that collect and distribute tissue to researchers across the United States and Canada. Since its establishment in 1987 the CHTN has provided more than 800,000 high quality specimens from a wide variety of organ types to over a thousand investigators. Basic and developmental studies in numerous areas of cancer research have been facilitated by the availability of these specimens.

The BIT provides whole slide images to expert pathologists to perform quality control of tissue specimens as well as digitized tissue microarrays to researchers.

Biospecimen Core Resource (BCR) a centralized site to review and process biospecimens and associated data for TCGA according to high quality standards. The BCR is the primary TCGA interface with the clinical sites at which donors are enrolled, and tissue samples and clinical data are collected. The Cancer genome Atlas project has been established to map multi-dimensional and key genomic changes in major  cancer types  and subtypes .The catalogue created from this project provides the ability in developing strategies for diagnosing , treating and preventing   different types of cancers. BIT works with expert pathologists within the BCR to digitize a variety glass slides for major cancer types

The St. Baldrick's Foundation 
is the world's largest volunteer-driven fundraising event for childhood cancer research. Thousands of volunteers shave their heads in solidarity of children with cancer, while requesting donations of support from friends and family.

The BIT was fortunate enough to be funded by St. Baldrick's to purchase an Aperio OS Oil Scanner for the creation of a Lymphoma & Leukemia Digital Archive. The addition of an Aperio ScanScope OS system will provide the necessary technology to permit the electronic review by expert pathologists and a digital archive of the original pathology material of patients registered on both lymphoma and leukemia cancer protocols. The addition of this requested equipment will not only allow us to digitize all  specimens but also integrate seamlessly with the existing framework at the BPC. The BPC currently acts as the biospecimen repository for both the Children's Oncology Group and the Gynecologic Oncology Group and this technology will promote digital review among multiple disease committees.

The Ohio Supercomputer Center provides supercomputing, networking, research and educational resources to a diverse state and national community, including education, academic research, industry and state government.

The  BIT currently utilizes the VIPER application for the pathology review of multiple diseases. The image data generated by the ScanScope OS, as well as all VIPER images, are stored and served from the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) in Columbus, Ohio. The OSC contains an infrastructure that provides high capacity data storage, a high performing network, and the ability to access high performance computing capabilities allowing for continued cutting-edge research. These components coupled with the subject matter experts at OSC provide a great collaborative environment for success.

The engineering and technical teams at the OSC have been instrumental in the architecture and development of multiple imaging initiatives including VIPER . Much of the image data generated by the digital imaging team is securely stored and served up to users from the OSC. The OSC contains an infrastructure that provides high capacity data storage (insert total terabytes here), a high performing network, and the ability to access high performance computing capabilities allowing for continued cutting-edge research.

The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital is one of the fastest growing pediatric research centers in the United States. As a subsidiary of Nationwide Children's Hospital, The Research Institute is organized into 13 multidisciplinary Centers of Emphasis that allow traditional academic boundaries to be crossed and merged. Scientific and clinical interests intersect in this model which encourages collaboration and the free flow of ideas. More than 80 faculty scientists focus on discoveries to improve child health ranging from basic molecular biology to applied, patient-oriented research. Beyond the walls and statistics lies a very clear mission: to enhance the health of children by engaging in high quality, cutting-edge research according to the highest scientific and ethical standards.

The Digital Imaging Team is located in the Research II facility at Nationwide Children's Hospital and works with many of its researchers.

Research Informatics Core

The Research Informatics Core is a multidisciplinary informatics application development team dedicated to enhancing and expanding research through the scientific application of information management and informatics innovation. The Core is an award winning, service-oriented group which possesses the following capabilities in these diverse areas:

• Custom computer application development
• Database design and development
• Data and environment integration
• Development of data mining and reporting tools
• Development of expert systems
• Image analysis
• Systems Architecture
• Informatics consulting
• Project management

Aperio Technologies provides systems and services for digital pathology.

The BIT currently utilizes both hardware and software provided by Aperio Technologies to digitize and deliver high quality whole slide images to the research community. As a result of the long-standing working relationship with Aperio,, the BIT is involved in beta testing of new products and frequently attends and presents at the annual Visions conferences.

Aperio provides consistent and regular maintenance to their customers, which enables the BIT to produce high-quality digitalized pathology images.