Development of a Data Integration and Visualization Software for LIDC

With the increasingly using of LIDC data in lung cancer research, education, and clinical medicine areas, the needs for effectively accessing and visualizing the CT scans and annotations collected by LIDC is more and more underscored. In this paper, we introduce the data integration and visualization software for the LIDC data exploration. A XML-based data model is provided for storing the LIDC data to combine different kinds of information into a uniform format. The data integration component is developed based on technologies of Java Excel API and JAXP. A nodule viewer is developed to visualize DICOM images and the annotations (commonly known as nodules) using DCMTK. The software offers a solution to the challenge of lack of a uniform data format for the LIDC data and nodule viewer. This software has the potential application in the areas of lung cancer research, education and patient care.