Dive Brief:
- Johns Hopkins researchers are building a digital library of children's brain images, in an effort to give doctors around the world access to a search engine that could help diagnose and treat pediatric neurological disorders.
- The databank, which currently has about 7000 brain images of Hopkins patients, should be publicly available in three years.
- When the program goes global, any radiologist would be able to access images by Hopkins specialists; details of each patient's medical condition are included, but names and other personal information are stripped out.
Dive Insight:
Though it's useful in helping with diagnoses, this database isn't just a catalog of images and diagnostic data. Going forward Hopkins hopes that the databank will help physicians and researchers detect new diseases or better classify them. The database could also shorten the time it takes for even experienced doctors to diagnose rarely seen neurological disorders. This is an exciting project.