Analysis Traceability for Biomedical Researchers

Abstract

With the recent increase in data volumes and algorithm complexity, clinical researchers are increasingly facing problems associated with information tracking, analysis reproducibility and the verification of scientific outputs. Systems are required that provide provenance data capture and management as support for analyses. This paper presents a provenance enabled system that is used in the N4U project, which aims to provide detailed trace ability to support research analysis processes in the study of biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease. To facilitate the orchestration of complex, large-scale analyses in this project we have adapted CRISTAL, a workflow and provenance tracking solution. The use of CRISTAL has provided a rich environment for neuroscientists to track the evolution of both data and workflows in N4U.