Fourteen Years of Open Data Sharing – The Cancer Imaging Archive
At the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT) Data Science Training webinar on Wednesday, May 14, 2025, Dr. Fred Prior from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences highlighted the significant role of The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) in enhancing cancer research. He emphasized how researchers are leveraging TCIA data to improve reproducibility in cancer studies and how the archive facilitates cost reduction through large-scale data reuse. Additionally, Dr. Prior provided an overview of TCIA’s 14-year history, underscoring the ongoing importance of FAIR data sharing practices in the scientific community. This commitment to open data sharing has made TCIA a vital resource for researchers, contributing to thousands of publications and supporting various cancer research initiatives.
Dr. Prior underscored TCIA’s significance by noting:
- De-identification and curation tools recognized as best practices globally, with an open-source software stack widely adopted.
- TCIA’s status as a recognized data publisher for numerous scientific journals.
- Support for multiple NCI programs, including CPTAC, NCTN, and the APOLLO network.
- Contribution to over 3,200 peer-reviewed publications and the development of 36 U.S. patents and three FDA-approved medical devices.
- An average of 30,000 global users visiting monthly, with nearly 5 petabytes of data downloaded each year.
You can find the recording of the webinar here.
