NCI Imaging Data Commons

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC) aims to establish a national cloud-based data science infrastructure. Imaging Data Commons (IDC) is a new component of CRDC supported by the Cancer Moonshot. The goal of IDC is to enable a broad spectrum of cancer researchers, with and without imaging expertise, to easily access and explore the value of deidentified imaging data and to support integrated analyses with nonimaging data. We achieve this goal by colocating versatile imaging collections with cloud-based computing resources and data exploration, visualization, and analysis tools. The IDC pilot was released in October 2020 and is being continuously populated with radiology and histopathology collections. IDC provides access to curated imaging collections, accompanied by documentation, a user forum, and a growing number of analysis use cases that aim to demonstrate the value of a data commons framework applied to cancer imaging research.Significance: This study introduces NCI Imaging Data Commons, a new repository of the NCI Cancer Research Data Commons, which will support cancer imaging research on the cloud.