Databases and Data Retrieval Flashcards
Why is it important to continuously review and monitor data collection?
to ensure that the data collection protocols have been understood and correctly applied
What is an audit trail?
A record of all the changes made to a database, usually with timestamps and user logs
Prospective Data
is data which is acquired after the research question and protocol have been established
biases and missing data are minimized
What is retrospective data?
Data which is mined from
existing sources and is more prone to bias
What is Big Data?
Extremely large datasets that are analyzed computationally to reveal unexpected patterns, trends, and associations
Are imaging databases generally similar?
No, here can be major differences across imaging databases
What are some considerations regarding which data should be collected when constructing an imaging research protocol? (7)
- Continuous Review and identifying ambiguity early on
- Establishing audit trails
- A way to identify data origin
- The type of data (prospective vs retrospective etc.)
- Recording of imaging protocols
- Whether or not to include the rad report
- Detailed clinical metadata collection
Data Warehouse
A database that collects a large amount of clinical or imaging data without a defined research question or purpose.
Subsets of the data can later be mined to answer newly framed questions
Where can a data warehouse collect information from?
One or more clinical operational systems (PACS, RIS, EHR, etc)
Structured Data
data that has well-defined relationships and can usually be stored as rows and columns
Unstructured Data
data that is not easily parsed
Examples include text, audio, and images themselves
Semi-structured Data
Data which has some of the elements of structured data (like a
DICOM header or XML tags) but is
not completely categorized
What is a relational database?
a database that stores data points
that are related to one another,
typically in columns and rows
