Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN)

The Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) is a geographically distributed virtual community of shared resources dedicated to advancing the diagnosis and treatment of disease. BIRN hosts a collaborative environment rich with tools that permit uniform access to hundreds of researchers, enabling cooperation on multi-institutional investigations to pose questions and share knowledge across multiple animal models (mouse, human, and non-human primate).

Funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), BIRN is currently comprised of 3 neuroimaging research test beds: Mouse, Human Morphometry, and Functional Imaging BIRN.

Functional Imaging BIRN (FBIRN) focuses on the development and validation of calibration and acquisition tools for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in large-scale, multi-site studies. FBIRN has developed a suite of imaging analysis and calibration tools comprising the Federated Informatics Research Environment (FIRE) to allow for the acquisition of high quality fMRI data that can be openly shared with the scientific community to develop and test novel hypotheses.

The FBIRN tools are designed to operating as part of a data sharing environment.