Dataset Information

TmaDB: a repository for tissue microarray data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Tissue microarray (TMA) technology has been developed to facilitate large, genome-scale molecular pathology studies. This technique provides a high-throughput method for analyzing a large cohort of clinical specimens in a single experiment thereby permitting the parallel analysis of molecular alterations (at the DNA, RNA, or protein level) in thousands of tissue specimens. As a vast quantity of data can be generated in a single TMA experiment a systematic approach is required for the storage and analysis of such data.

Description

To analyse TMA output a relational database (known as TmaDB) has been developed to collate all aspects of information relating to TMAs. These data include the TMA construction protocol, experimental protocol and results from the various immunocytological and histochemical staining experiments including the scanned images for each of the TMA cores. Furthermore the database contains pathological information associated with each of the specimens on the TMA slide, the location of the various TMAs and the individual specimen blocks (from which cores were taken) in the laboratory and their current status i.e. if they can be sectioned into further slides or if they are exhausted. TmaDB has been designed to incorporate and extend many of the published common data elements and the XML format for TMA experiments and is therefore compatible with the TMA data exchange specifications developed by the Association for Pathology Informatics community. Finally the design of the database is made flexible such that TMA experiments from several types of cancer can be stored in a single database, which incorporates the national minimum data set required for pathology reports supported by the Royal College of Pathologists (UK).

Conclusion

TmaDB will provide a comprehensive repository for TMA data such that a large number of results from the numerous immunostaining experiments can be efficiently compared for each of the TMA cores. This will allow a systematic, large-scale comparison of tumour samples to facilitate the identification of gene products of clinical importance such as therapeutic or prognostic markers. In addition this work will contribute to the establishment of a standard for reporting TMA data analogous to MIAME in the description of microarray data.

SUBMITTER: Sharma-Oates A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1215475 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

TmaDB: a repository for tissue microarray data.

Sharma-Oates Archana A Quirke Philip P Westhead David R DR

BMC bioinformatics 20050901

<h4>Background</h4>Tissue microarray (TMA) technology has been developed to facilitate large, genome-scale molecular pathology studies. This technique provides a high-throughput method for analyzing a large cohort of clinical specimens in a single experiment thereby permitting the parallel analysis of molecular alterations (at the DNA, RNA, or protein level) in thousands of tissue specimens. As a vast quantity of data can be generated in a single TMA experiment a systematic approach is required ...[more]

PMID: 16137321

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Project description:BackgroundTissue Microarrays (TMAs) allow researchers to examine hundreds of small tissue samples on a single glass slide. The information held in a single TMA slide may easily involve Gigabytes of data. To benefit from TMA technology, the scientific community needs an open source TMA data exchange specification that will convey all of the data in a TMA experiment in a format that is understandable to both humans and computers. A data exchange specification for TMAs allows researchers to submit their data to journals and to public data repositories and to share or merge data from different laboratories. In May 2001, the Association of Pathology Informatics (API) hosted the first in a series of four workshops, co-sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, to develop an open, community-supported TMA data exchange specification.MethodsA draft tissue microarray data exchange specification was developed through workshop meetings. The first workshop confirmed community support for the effort and urged the creation of an open XML-based specification. This was to evolve in steps with approval for each step coming from the stakeholders in the user community during open workshops. By the fourth workshop, held October, 2002, a set of Common Data Elements (CDEs) was established as well as a basic strategy for organizing TMA data in self-describing XML documents.ResultsThe TMA data exchange specification is a well-formed XML document with four required sections: 1) Header, containing the specification Dublin Core identifiers, 2) Block, describing the paraffin-embedded array of tissues, 3)Slide, describing the glass slides produced from the Block, and 4) Core, containing all data related to the individual tissue samples contained in the array. Eighty CDEs, conforming to the ISO-11179 specification for data elements constitute XML tags used in the TMA data exchange specification. A set of six simple semantic rules describe the complete data exchange specification. Anyone using the data exchange specification can validate their TMA files using a software implementation written in Perl and distributed as a supplemental file with this publication.ConclusionThe TMA data exchange specification is now available in a draft form with community-approved Common Data Elements and a community-approved general file format and data structure. The specification can be freely used by the scientific community. Efforts sponsored by the Association for Pathology Informatics to refine the draft TMA data exchange specification are expected to continue for at least two more years. The interested public is invited to participate in these open efforts. Information on future workshops will be posted at http://www.pathologyinformatics.org (API we site).

Project description:BackgroundTissue Microarrays (TMAs) have emerged as a powerful tool for examining the distribution of marker molecules in hundreds of different tissues displayed on a single slide. TMAs have been used successfully to validate candidate molecules discovered in gene array experiments. Like gene expression studies, TMA experiments are data intensive, requiring substantial information to interpret, replicate or validate. Recently, an open access Tissue Microarray Data Exchange Specification has been released that allows TMA data to be organized in a self-describing XML document annotated with well-defined common data elements. While this specification provides sufficient information for the reproduction of the experiment by outside research groups, its initial description did not contain instructions or examples of actual implementations, and no implementation studies have been published. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the TMA Data Exchange Specification is implemented in a prostate cancer TMA.ResultsThe Cooperative Prostate Cancer Tissue Resource (CPCTR) is funded by the National Cancer Institute to provide researchers with samples of prostate cancer annotated with demographic and clinical data. The CPCTR now offers prostate cancer TMAs and has implemented a TMA database conforming to the new open access Tissue Microarray Data Exchange Specification. The bulk of the TMA database consists of clinical and demographic data elements for 299 patient samples. These data elements were extracted from an Excel database using a transformative Perl script. The Perl script and the TMA database are open access documents distributed with this manuscript.ConclusionsTMA databases conforming to the Tissue Microarray Data Exchange Specification can be merged with other TMA files, expanded through the addition of data elements, or linked to data contained in external biological databases. This article describes an open access implementation of the TMA Data Exchange Specification and provides detailed guidance to researchers who wish to use the Specification.

Project description:BackgroundThe Association for Pathology Informatics (API) Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) TMA Data Exchange Specification (TMA DES) proposed in April 2003 provides a community-based, open source tool for sharing tissue microarray (TMA) data in a common format. Each tissue core within an array has separate data including digital images; therefore an organized, common approach to produce, navigate and publish such data facilitates viewing, sharing and merging TMA data from different laboratories. The AIDS and Cancer Specimen Resource (ACSR) is a HIV/AIDS tissue bank consortium sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD). The ACSR offers HIV-related malignancies and uninfected control tissues in microarrays (TMA) accompanied by de-identified clinical data to approved researchers. Exporting our TMA data into the proposed API specified format offers an opportunity to evaluate the API specification in an applied setting and to explore its usefulness.ResultsA document type definition (DTD) that governs the allowed common data elements (CDE) in TMA DES export XML files was written, tested and evolved and is in routine use by the ACSR. This DTD defines TMA DES CDEs which are implemented in an external file that can be supplemented by internal DTD extensions for locally defined TMA data elements (LDE).ConclusionACSR implementation of the TMA DES demonstrated the utility of the specification and allowed application of a DTD to validate the language of the API specified XML elements and to identify possible enhancements within our TMA data management application. Improvements to the specification have additionally been suggested by our experience in importing other institution's exported TMA data. Enhancements to TMA DES to remove ambiguous situations and clarify the data should be considered. Better specified identifiers and hierarchical relationships will make automatic use of the data possible. Our tool can be used to reorder data and add identifiers; upgrading data for changes in the specification can be automatically accomplished. Using a DTD (optionally reflecting our proposed enhancements) can provide stronger validation of exported TMA data.

Dataset Information

TmaDB: a repository for tissue microarray data.

Background

Description

Conclusion

Publications

TmaDB: a repository for tissue microarray data.

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