A Service-Based Approach for Managing Mammography Data

Grid-based technologies are emerging as a potential open-source standards-based solution for managing and collabo-rating distributed resources. In view of these new computing solutions, the Mammogrid project is developing a service-based and Grid-aware application which manages a Euro-pean-wide database of mammograms. Medical conditions such as breast cancer, and mammograms as images, are ex-tremely complex with many dimensions of variability across the population. An effective solution for the management of disparate mammogram data sources is a federation of autonomous multi-centre sites which transcends national boundaries. The Mammogrid solution utilizes the Grid tech-nologies to integrate geographically distributed data sets. The Mammogrid application will explore the potential of the Grid to support effective co-working among radiologists through-out the EU. This paper outlines the Mammogrid service-based approach in managing a federation of grid-connected mam-mography databases.