Capricorn Technologies archives and delivers world-class medical imagery to MRPath clients

MRPath, founded by experts in the field of Magnetic Imaging Technologies, provides software and services inspired by their work with the National Cancer Institute and the National Toxicology Program.

The MRPath founders were initially motivated by a desire to make available a heretofore expensive and specialized imaging capability to a broad community of users in research and industry. In addition to expertise in MR microscopy, the company offers other imaging modalities, the management of image-intense databases, and their integration within protocols and studies. This experience working with scientific imagery, along with their interest in developing services and products that enable their customers to leapfrog the imaging learning curve, allows the company to bypass the efficiency drain of data storage and image processing, and eliminate imaging equipment compatibility headaches. These goals led to the creation of a software product line that can reduce their customers’ costs, increase the amount of time available to researchers to focus on knowledge generation and meet regulatory requirements.

In early 2003, the company recognized a need for low-cost storage for their managed databases. Existing storage SAN and NAS vendors were providing the wrong sorts of features – making their storage solutions not cost effective for massive image archives. At the same time, they saw an opportunity to provide a more plug-and-play appliance-based platform to some of their customers that don’t have an IT staff or a hardware budget for tens and hundreds of terabytes of data. They did not want to just offer an image archive, however.  They wanted to deliver images to the biologist, pathologist, or other user with special imaging needs in an acceptable time frame, while insuring that their data was safe, secure, and available well into the future.

In their search for reliable, cost-performing data storage, they evaluated a number of options, finally electing to go with Capricorn Technologies.

“The Internet Archive and, subsequently, Capricorn Technologies were the first people to solve the massive data storage problem we faced, in a way that made digital imaging cost effective,” remarks Bryn Forbes, MRPath President. “They went beyond the obvious problems of initial cost and added cost savings and environmental stewardship through low power-consuming components and custom-designed cases for easy installation and reduced footprints. They get it.”

The MRPath research database, since being housed on Capricorn’s PetaBox technology, has enabled the National Toxicology Program to evaluate with much greater immediacy the toxic levels of a myriad of chemicals. They also regularly discover the effects of toxicity in places they had never suspected before. For instance, they were able to identify a chemical in contaminated drinking water that resulted in a 10% loss in mass of a certain brain structure even though the structure showed no obvious signs of damage. Though enormously useful for critical information exchange and discovery, the huge data requirements associated with MR (Magnetic Resonance) imagery has been the major reason that new imaging techniques haven’t spread widely before.

But that is now changing, thanks to the cost-performing PetaBox technology. With PetaBox data storage in place, MRPath can share their database with the National Cancer Institute and 15 other consortium members, and the National Toxicology Program can search15 years worth of digital data on demand. Prior to the PetaBox installation, researchers had to make requests for data and image searches via a paper form delivered by courier to librarians who would perform the search, burn a CD with the results, and return the CD by courier. The old process took days to complete. The new process delivers requested files in a matter of seconds. MRPath VoxPort™ technology on the PetaBox is also used in drug development, speeding up the research required to certify and bring a drug to market.