Hi, 3DSlicer Community. I’m writing to let you know about a new research resource, the New Mexico Decedent Image Database. NMDID is a free access searchable database of over 15,000 whole body human cadaver CT scans. The scans are searchable and documented by up to 69 metadata variables. Searching and use are available to all qualified researchers with institutional email addressed. Please check out nmdid.unm.edu to see what is available. And, please help us spread the word about this resource far and wide! Thanks.
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It looks like a wonderful resource (here is a direct link to it), thank you for letting us know about it.
It is too bad the access is made so hard: before you get access to a data set, you need to register an account, wait for its approval, create a query, create a request to execute that query (you need to include research plan, hypothesis, expected results, etc. - like a small grant application), wait for its approval, and then you can download images. Commercial use and creation of derivative works is prohibited, which also make the database significantly less desirable (I cannot recommend anyone to create segmentations or annotations of these data sets if the results cannot be openly shared).
At least making a couple of scans (of different age, gender, etc.) available openly, without registration, without any usage restrictions, would go a long way of making this database better known and more useful for a wide audience.
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Hi Andras,
Access to search and download metadata does require registration and signing a data use agreement. This takes place in less than 24 hours, and only requires an institutional email address (your request has already been approved). Downloading CT’s requires a research request of a maximum 750 words. These are also reviewed within 24 hours. Commercial use and creation of derivative works is not blanket prohibited; the NMDID Team reserves the right to deny some commercial and derivatives.
The data provided here is considered sensitive by many people. The precautions described above allow us to make the data available and safeguard its use. I hope you find that this new, potentially transformative research is worth the effort to access it.
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Thanks for all these details and for providing this service to the research community.
It would be nice if you could make it more clear on the website what does “not blanket prohibited” mean in practice: a few specific examples of what you are allowed to do without extra permissions, and what you can expect to get permission for almost automatically.
Even if you simplify and clarify the process, I would still recommend to make selected data sets or collections accessible much more easily, as it would make it faster and simpler for people to get started. They would have some data to work with until they are waiting to get access. This is the approach used by most other repositories, such as TCIA, MorphoSource, and all the data warehouses of 3D models, images, etc.