caDSR Hosted Data Standards, Downloads, and Transformation Utilities

The NCI caDSR CDE Browser can be used to download collections of metadata describing data held in repositories for cancer research and clinical trials. There are currently no NCI Recommended CDEs for use other than the  CDEs marked as having a Registration Status of "Standard".  Any CDE in caDSR can be reused, but the ones marked "Standard" have been through a broader governance process. There communities within NCI who have agreed to use a set of CDEs for specific purposes, for example EDRN, TCGA, NCTN, and many others.  If you wish to collect data that is compatible with a specific group, you should begin by looking for the group's CDEs using the CDE Browser.  The Context name is an organizing principle for tree based navigation, and the "Advanced Search" provides a way to search for CDEs grouped by Classifications, or keywords.

Best Practices for creating CDEs  can be found here.

The caDSR Form Builder can be used to create, view and download the Case Report Forms (CRFs) designs. Each question on a caDSR Form is generally backed by a caDSR CDE, though we do have some forms that were bulk loaded without CDEs. When a CDE is associated with a form it is visible in the Form Builder web application, and is present in the XML or Excel download. Since each CDE has been annotated with semantic concepts for the question and each valid value, you can use this information to compare data that may be been represented differently, or to explore deeper meaning by traversing to the NCI Thesaurus for synonyms, related concepts, and other semantic information about each concept. The concept information for each valid value is not in the XML or Excel download, but we can produce a CRF Data Dictionary which will contain the concepts for each question and valid value for any associated CDE. Please sent the CRF public ID and version number to the NCI App Support desk and ask that the caDSR team help you with this request.

Currently, CDEs can be downloaded to Excel or XML Format. CRFs can be downloaded to Excel format. 

TCGA Phase II meta data elements (CDEs)

TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas) is a project funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). A project overview can be found on the TCGA Home Page.

TCGA provides data element descriptions for the clinical data elements found in the TCGA data files.  The BCR on-line data dictionary displaying the essentials of the clinical CDEs as an HTML page is located here.  The files below contain all the caDSR metadata for these CDEs.  The HTML data dictionary was generated from the XML download of the TCGA CDEs. For more information or help creating your own HTML Data Dictionary from NCI registered CDEs, please contact the NCI Help Desk.

They are also available from the CDE Browser in the caBIG Context under the Classifications tab heading " TCGA 2.6 by Disease ".  New TCGA CDEs not yet in the BCR data dictionary can be found under the caBIG Classification "The Cancer Genome Atlas", sub-heading "New TCGA Data Elements"

• TCGA Phase II CDEs in Excel - as of Oct. 19, 2011
• TCGA Phase II CDEs in XML - as of Oct. 19, 2011

Biomedical Research Integrated Domain Group (BRIDG) meta data elements (CDEs)

BRIDG is a model that was created by a collaborative effort engaging stakeholders from the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC), the HL7 BRIDG Work Group, the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A logical information model was developed to describe basic, pre-clinical, clinical, and translational research.  Please visit the BRIDG website for more information.

The CDEs in the BRIDG model are available from the CDE Browser in the BRIDG Context under the Classifications heading "Link to BRIDG 3.2", subheading "BRIDG 3.2". They have been downloaded and made available here for convenience.

• BRIDG 3.2 in Excel  - as of Aug. 11, 2015
• BRIDG 3.2 in XML - as of Aug. 11, 2015

 BRIDG 3.0.2 is also available in the Attachments section of this page and in the CDE Browser.

National Biomedical Imaging Archive (NBIA)(formerly NCIA)

The CDEs in the HINTS 2005 survey are available from the CDE Browser in the caBIG Context under the Classifications heading "NBIA". They have been downloaded and made available here for convenience.

• NBIA CDEs in Excel - as of Feb 09, 2011
• NBIA CDEs in XML - as of Feb 09, 2011

Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) meta data elements (CDEs)

The SEER program works to provide information on cancer statistics in an effort to reduce the burden of cancer among the U.S. population.  The data elements collected in cancer surveillance have been registered in the NCI caDSR, and are available from the CDE Browser in the PS&CC Context under the Classifications tab heading "caSEER", subheading " com.imsweb.caseer ". They have been downloaded and made available here for convenience.

• SEER CDEs in Excel - as of Dec 23, 2010
• SEER CDEs in XML - as of Dec 23, 2010

Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS2005)

The CDEs in the HINTS 2005 survey are available from the CDE Browser in the PS&CC Context under the Classifications heading "HINTS2005". They have been downloaded and made available here for convenience.

• HINTS 2005 CDEs in Excel - as of April 04, 2012
• HINTS 2005 CDEs in XML - as of April 04, 2012