What is NITRC?
NeuroImaging Tools & Resources Collaboratory is a United States Department of Health and Human Services award-winning, and free web-based resource that offers comprehensive information on an ever expanding scope of neuroinformatics software and data. NITRC has met the stringent FAIR sharing and open access requirements to be listed as a NIH-Supported Scientific Data Repository, a NLM Domain-Specific Repository and a neuroscience repository on Scientific Data. Since 2007, NITRC has been helping the global neuroscience community make further discoveries using software and data produced from research that used to end up lost or disregarded. NITRC also provides free access to data and enables pay-per-use cloud-based access to unlimited computing power, enabling worldwide scientific collaboration with minimal startup and cost.
With NITRC and its components—the Resources Registry (NITRC-R), Image Repository (NITRC-IR), and Computational Environment (NITRC-CE)—a researcher can obtain pilot or proof-of-concept data to validate a hypothesis for just a few dollars.
NITRC Resources Registry (NITRC-R) promotes software tools and resources, vocabularies, test data, and databases, thereby extending the impact of previously funded, neuroimaging informatics contributions to a broader community. NITRC-R gives researchers greater and more efficient access to the tools and resources they need, better categorizing and organizing existing tools and resources, facilitating interactions between researchers and developers, and promoting better use through enhanced documentation and tutorials—all while directing the most recent upgrades, forums, and updates.
A NIH-Supported Scientific Data Repository, NITRC Image Repository (NITRC-IR) does for data what NITRC-R does for tools. Search for and freely download publicly available data sets including thousands of DICOM, NIfTI and now BIDS normal subjects and those with diagnoses such as: schizophrenia, ADHD, autism, and Parkinson's.
NITRC Computational Environment (NITRC-CE) is a freely downloadable, or pay-as-you-go virtual computing cloud-based platform pre-configured with popular neuroimaging software tools such as AFNI, ANTS, FreeSurfer, FSL and more. You may use any of these pre-installed tools to analyze your data more quickly and more easily than having to configure them all on your own; better to spend your time on research than on system configuration and administration. And, if our pre-installed selections are not sufficient, you can add your own commercial and open source software tools to your virtual machine.
Join Us!
As a community driven collaboratory, NITRC needs your involvement as a member of the neuroimaging community. This will help us become an even more efficient, trustworthy online community for discussion and collaboration regarding neuroimaging informatics analysis tools and resources.
Becoming a registered NITRC user is the best way to fully participate. Everyone benefits from your contributions via forum posts, shared documents, wiki, and more. Researchers new to neuroimaging analysis need community input about the tools/resources that might best suit their research and as a registered NITRC user, you can help guide the future of neuroimaging.
We're Award Winning
In 2015, NITRC was recognized by the Department of Health and Human Services as the project to have given the "Biggest Bang for the Buck" for providing "significant savings or return-on-investment for HHS resources expended," the NIH award submission noted that the project has delivered "a potential cost avoidance of over $35.3 million."
NITRC was one of seven Innovation awardees, and was chosen out of over 70 applicants. In addition, in 2009 NITRC was awarded "Best Overall" category by Excellence.Gov.
How are we Funded?
NITRC is funded by: NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institute of Drug Addiction, National Institute of Mental Health, and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.