The Cardiac Atlas Project: Rationale, Design and Procedures

The Cardiac Atlas Project (CAP) is a NIH sponsored international collaboration to establish a web-accessible structural and functional atlas of the normal and pathological heart as a resource for the clinical, research and educational communities. An initial goal of the atlas is to facilitate statistical analysis of regional heart shape and wall motion characteristics, and characterization of remodeling, between and within population groups. The two main early contributing studies are the Multi Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) and the Defibrillators to Reduce Risk by Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evaluation (DETERMINE) clinical trial. De-identified image and text data from 2864 asymptomatic volunteers from MESA, and 470 myocardial infarction cases from DETERMINE, are currently available in the CAP database. DICOM images were de-identified using HIPAA compliant software based on tools provided by the Center for Computational Biology at UCLA. Only those cases with informed consent and IRB approval compatible with the CAP were included. Researchers requesting permission to access CAP data can apply through the CAP website (www.cardiacatlas.org). All proposals for data access must be approved by the data contributors, and applicants must sign a data transfer agreement with each study from which data is requested. Software to visualize cardiac images and create 3D mathematical models, developed in the CAP, is available open-source from the website.