Managing Pan-European mammography images and data using a service oriented architecture

Medical conditions such as breast cancer, and mammograms as images, are extremely complex with many degrees of variability across the population. An effective solution for the management of disparate mammogram data sources that provides sufficient statistics for complex epidemiological study is a federation of autonomous multi-centre sites which transcends national boundaries. Grid-based technologies are emerging as open-source standards-based solutions for managing and collaborating distributed resources. In the light of these new computing solutions, the MammoGrid project, as one example of a HealthGrid, is developing a Grid-aware medical application which manages a European-wide database of mammograms. The MammoGrid solution utilizes the grid technologies in seamlessly integrating distributed data sets and is investigating the potential of the Grid to support effective co-working among mammogram analysts throughout the EU.