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If you had cancer, wouldn't you want your medical team to be able to share image data collected about your cancer, in its native format, no matter which discipline that data belonged to? The challenge to this ideal is that image data from different disciplines are not currently directly comparable. You cannot take an ultrasound of a tumor and compare its features to those on a slide containing cells of that same tumor, for example, let alone compare that tumor to the same kind in a mouse.

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To make data comparable, it must first be collected in a structured fashion. For example, TCGA relies on Common Data Elements, which are the standard elements that structure TCGA data. Second, data comparisons require common data vocabularies. For example, when a tumor is described in a human or an animal, one of a discrete number of options using approved vocabulary options must be used to describe the tumor.

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