Integration of Behavioral, Structural, Functional, and Genetic Data for the Study of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Pursuant to its commitment to cultivating a greater understanding of mental illness, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have created the National Database for Clinical Trials, where data from a wide variety of NIH-funded studies are deposited in the hope that as many qualified researchers as possible can examine these data. As the designated Data Coordinating Center in the Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) network, the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI) is faced with the task of efficiently organizing data from behavioral assessments, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI (fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), electroencephalography (EEG), and whole-genome analysis. To encourage fusion of data across modalities, we have integrated a direct National Database for Autism Research (NDAR) data sharing capability into the LONI Pipeline processing environment, which allows users to create workflows by mixing and matching analytic tools from a library of common neuroimaging, genetics, and statistical software packages.