1
Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2
Department of Computer Science, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
The LONI
Pipeline is a graphical environment for construction, validation and execution of advanced neuroimaging data analysis protocols (
Rex et al., 2003). It enables automated data format conversion, allows Grid utilization, facilitates data provenance, and provides a significant library of computational tools. There are two main advantages of the LONI
Pipeline over other graphical analysis workflow architectures. It is built as a distributed Grid computing environment and permits efficient tool integration, protocol validation and broad resource distribution. To integrate existing data and computational tools within the LONI
Pipeline environment, no modification of the resources themselves is required. The LONI
Pipeline provides several types of process submissions based on the underlying server hardware infrastructure. Only workflow instructions and references to data, executable scripts and binary instructions are stored within the LONI
Pipeline environment. This makes it portable, computationally efficient, distributed and independent of the individual binary processes involved in pipeline data-analysis workflows. We have expanded the LONI
Pipeline (V.4.2) to include server-to-server (peer-to-peer) communication and a 3-tier failover infrastructure (Grid hardware, Sun Grid Engine/Distributed Resource Management Application API middleware, and the
Pipeline server). Additionally, the LONI
Pipeline provides three layers of background-server executions for all users/sites/systems. These new LONI
Pipeline features facilitate resource-interoperability, decentralized computing, construction and validation of efficient and robust neuroimaging data-analysis workflows. Using brain imaging data from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (
Mueller et al., 2005), we demonstrate integration of disparate resources, graphical construction of complex neuroimaging analysis protocols and distributed parallel computing. The LONI
Pipeline, its features, specifications, documentation and usage are available online (
http://Pipeline.loni.ucla.edu).