Virtual Lab for fMRI: Bridging the Usability Gap

Grid technology can offer a powerful infrastructure for a broad spectrum of (scientific) application areas, but the uptake of grids by "real\´ applications has been slow. Several aspects contribute to this scenario, among them a large gap between the communities that develop and use the technology. While grid developments focus mostly on functionality, usability issues are also very important for the endusers. In the VL-e project, one of the goals is to bridge this gap, bringing (existing) grid technology to end-users in various application domains. This paper describes the current attempts to provide an IT infrastructure to facilitate neuroimaging research, in particular functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), which enables the study of brain function. The infrastructure offers resources for fMRI data acquisition, data storage, computing and services. All (local and grid) resources are accessed directly by the users from a virtual desktop implemented by a Virtual Resource Browser (VBrowser).