{"id":110720,"date":"2021-09-23T16:25:34","date_gmt":"2021-09-23T20:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=110720"},"modified":"2024-03-01T15:05:07","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T20:05:07","slug":"developing-a-cloud-based-platform-to-standardize-data-storage-from-wearable-brain-sensing-devices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2021\/09\/23\/developing-a-cloud-based-platform-to-standardize-data-storage-from-wearable-brain-sensing-devices\/","title":{"rendered":"Developing a Cloud-Based Platform to Standardize Data Storage from Wearable Brain Sensing Devices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Originally published<\/a> by Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering<\/em><\/p>\n

By Gina Mantica<\/em><\/p>\n

To study how the brain works in the real world rather than the lab, researchers are creating wearable devices that obtain a complete picture of the brain\u2019s activity in real time. But the complex data collected by researchers needs to be stored, organized, and shared in a way that allows for more meaningful collaboration and analysis. Researchers at Boston University are developing a web platform that not only automates the storage of neurological data collected from wearable devices, but also standardizes how the data are stored.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Boas<\/a>, Director of the Neurophotonics Center<\/a>, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Research Fellow at the Hariri Institute, received a supplementary award from the National Institutes of Health to team up with the Software & Application Innovation Lab (SAIL)<\/a> and create a platform that improves quality assurance and enables easy data analysis.<\/p>\n

Data collected from wearable neurological devices can help researchers understand how a person\u2019s environment affects their behavior and in turn, the activity of their brain. <\/span>Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) <\/span>is a neuroimaging technique that tracks blood flow in the brain to understand how activity across the brain changes over time. The researchers combine fNIRS with electroencephalograms (EEG) that measure the brain\u2019s electrical activity and eye-tracking software to time lock the brain\u2019s activity to data on what people see and interact with in their environments. This provides researchers with a complete picture of the brain\u2019s activity in the everyday world.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Research Fellow David Boas will team up with SAIL engineers to create a cloud-based platform that improves quality assurance and enables easy data analysis from wearable brain sensing devices.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


\nResearchers store data collected from these devices, as well as analysis methods for this rapidly growing field of research, on GitHub and other databases. But storage on these platforms is not standardized or organized in a way that facilitates data sharing. SAIL engineers will build a cloud-based web platform that helps users create and modify data folders in standardized formats. \u201cWe don\u2019t aim to replace those servers, but to provide features that go beyond storing and sharing,\u201d said Boas. The interface will remind users to include all necessary information and alert the user if information is missing or uploaded incorrectly. And, the platform will assess the signal to noise ratio of data files for quality assurance. Users will also be encouraged to upload their data immediately after collection to get immediate feedback of data quality issues that help improve future measurements.<\/span><\/p>\n

Automating and standardizing the organization and analysis of complex neurological data will advance our understanding of how the brain works, and could help inform future treatments for patients with strokes, concussions, Parkinson\u2019s disease, or Alzheimer\u2019s disease. \u201cIt will accelerate the adoption of good data organization and data analysis methods, particularly for those new in this rapidly growing field,\u201d said Boas, \u201cThus researchers will make fewer mistakes and be more likely to make meaningful interpretations of their datasets to contribute to our body of knowledge of how the human brain functions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To study how the brain works in the real world rather than the lab, researchers are creating wearable devices that obtain a complete picture of the brain\u2019s activity in real time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,899,255,1057,977,240,907],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128404,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110720\/revisions\/128404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}