Tools

The BRAINCommons was designed with user-friendly Tools to empower the Brain Health research community. This unique resource allows registered users to combine, interpret, and analyze vast and disparate data types from different sources with sophisticated visualization and analytics tools. It is also designed to be accessible across a spectrum of competencies from the casual user to the advanced data scientist. 

The BRAINCommons will utilize state-of-the art information technology to support petabyte-scale storage and integrated analysis of disparate data types including imaging, genomic, biomic, wearable, sensor, and clinical and preclinical data.

For the programmer and data scientist, this resource also includes data science tools for developers to create new analyses, pipelines and visualization tools.

Featured Tools available in the BRAINCommons

Data Explorer and Analysis Tool (Beta Release)

Data in the BRAINCommons can be filtered and saved for analysis. Custom point-and-click tools allow users to explore and build cohorts as well as perform basic analysis. The tool enables researchers to perform ad-hoc exploration of the data using a variety of plots for visualization. An explanation for each type of plot is available via an information bubble in the BRAINCommons Platform.

BRAINCommons Workspace (Beta Release)

Workspaces are available to Qualified Researchers (Zone 2 users) and Designated Users (Zone 3 users) via the advanced compute request process within the BRAINCommons (BC) and provide access to Jupyter Notebook and R Studio. It is recommended that users have programming experience with R or Python and review the BRAINCommons support documentation to take full advantage of the BC Workspace tool. This information provides the how-to-steps for making the most of the BRAINCommons Workspace experience. Approved users with R or Python experience can use workspaces to access, store and analyze data across multiple cohorts. Our workspaces allow for collaboration and can be shared among members of a project team with similar data access rights.

Jupyter Notebook Analytics

Jupyter Notebook allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text. Uses include: data cleaning and transformation, numerical simulation, statistical modeling, data visualization, machine learning, and more.

R Studio

The BRAINCommons workspace tool comes pre-configured with a development environment for the statistical programming language R. More information about RStudio can be found at RStudio.com.