This chapter describes how to get started using TCIA. A short video tutorial is also available:
Topics in this chapter include:
Introduction to TCIA
TCIA provides the cancer research and medical community, industry, and academia access to imaging archives that can be used for many purposes, including the potential to assist in the development and validation of analytical software tools supporting these functions:
- Lesion detection and classification software
- Accelerated diagnostic imaging decision
- Quantitative imaging assessment of drug response
The archive provides access to imaging resources that improve the use of imaging in today's cancer research and practice. This access increases the efficiency and reproducibility of imaging cancer detection and diagnosis, leverages imaging to provide an objective assessment of therapeutic response, and ultimately enables the development of imaging resources that will lead to improved clinical decision support.
Clinical trials, physicians and other researchers submit images to TCIA using the CTP (Clinical Trial Processing) software. Any potential user can then access TCIA to search for and download images and associated annotation files.
Images are stored in the medical image standard, Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM). A DICOM file stores the digital image along with a series of tags that contain metadata about the image such as patient ID, study ID, patient weight, anatomic site, and so forth. More information about DICOM.
Here is a short video introduction to TCIA:
Refresh button
The TCIA application does not support the refresh button. You are encouraged to refrain from using it when in the application.
Registering a New User
Using TCIA Without Logging In
You do not have to log in to access public data in TCIA. Simply begin to use the features on the Welcome page.
You can use the search function as a "guest" without logging in. All data that TCIA returns without being logged in is public. As a guest, you can add data to the data basket. For more information, see Working with the Data Basket.
If you are not logged into the application, some functions are unavailable; these are saving a search query, viewing saved queries, viewing query histories, and managing saved queries. You also cannot download more than 3 gigabytes of data at one time.
If the application is configured to enable the guest account access, the login section will be "hidden" by the login link by default. Additionally, you should be able to see the Search Image link on the home page.
Bypassing Login
In some cases of local installation, the decision may have been made not to enable public data access without login. If the application is configured to disable the guest account access, the login section is "expanded" by default. If that's the case, there is no way for the user to bypass login and perform tasks.
