The Child's Brain: Applications of the Internet Brain Volume Database (IBVD)
-
1
University of Massachusetts, Department of Psychiatry, United States
Introduction:The Internet Brain Volume Database (IBVD, http://www.cma.mgh.harvard.edu/ibvd) is a web-based database designed to capture volumetric observations of neuroanatomic structures from the literature. IBVD was the first site dedicated to exposing, sharing, and integrating brain volume observations, and does so across species and disease. The principal objective is to capture retrospective data and evaluate used compliance in order to finalize a proof of concept for this site to enable migration of the concept to a long term, sustainable solution. Every week, numerous publications appear that include neuroanatomic volumetric observations; about one third of these are applications in the child and adolescent age groups, and the total magnitude of literature for particular neuroanatomic structures is quite variable. The harvesting of published information is, at the moment, very labor intensive; thus initial efforts are concentrated on structures and disorders that have the maximum number of published observations. These include structures such as the total brain, cerebral cortex, cerebral white matter, and hippocampus. In the pediatric populations, prevalent diagnoses with volumetric reports include normal, early-onset bipolar and schizophrenia, autism, and dyslexia.
Approach:IBVD is a web application implemented in PHP on top of a PostgreSQL database. Data entry statistics (as of April, 2009) include 421 publications, 1103 subject groups, 5057 group volume entries, over 80 clinical diagnoses, 1910 individuals, 9054 individual structural volume entries, and over 90 discrete brain structures. The use of a structured vocabulary is necessary in order to maximize the interoperability of this site with other data resources. To date, the anatomic hierarchy supported by IBVD subtends a specific spatial scale of the complete possible neuroanatomic ontology space. Structures, from the whole brain to major subdivisions (e.g. cerebrum) to components of these major regions (e.g. cerebral cortex, white matter) to subcomponents within these regions (e.g. precentral gyrus), are mapped into this ontology. Many of these structures have links to other ontological systems, and are organized through the NeuroLex system.
Applications of the meta-analysis facilitated by the database are many-fold. In the pediatric populations, it is highly informative to study the extent to which volumetric patterns observed in the adult are also seen in the younger age groups: What age does the finding of differing rates of growth between gray and white matter structures first appear? At what age does do the findings of gender dimorphism appear? Is the adult asymmetric lateralization of the hippocampus also seen in children? How prevalent in the literature is the finding of limbic volumetric alterations in children with pediatric bipolar disorder?
Summary:IBVD is in a beta test phase where the principal objective is to capture as much retrospective data as possible and evaluate used compliance in order to provide a proof of concept for this site to enable migration of the concept to a long term, sustainable solution. Efforts are ongoing to increase the content of the database and to facilitate meta-analytic investigation of the historical literature on the volumetric observations of the developing brain.
Conference:
Neuroinformatics 2009, Pilsen, Czechia, 6 Sep - 8 Sep, 2009.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Infrastructural and portal services
Citation:
Haselgrove
C,
Hodge
S,
Frazier
J and
Kennedy
D
(2019). The Child's Brain: Applications of the Internet Brain Volume Database (IBVD).
Front. Neuroinform.
Conference Abstract:
Neuroinformatics 2009.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.11.2009.08.074
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
22 May 2009;
Published Online:
09 May 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Christian Haselgrove, University of Massachusetts, Department of Psychiatry, Worcester, United States, christian.haselgrove@umassmed.edu