Abstract
It is usually a challenging task to integrate and analyze huge amounts of heterogeneous data in large medical research projects. Often meaningful new insights can be achieved by visualizing medical data on geographical maps. For instance in epidemiological studies, data is often explored on a spatial dimension. LIFE is a large epidemiological study, managed by the LIFE Research Center for Civilization Diseases at Leipzig University. The study investigates the health-related states of the local population, e.g. by looking at the role of lifestyle factors on major civilization diseases. To allow for an effective data exploration, the development of sophisticated data analysis and spatial visualization techniques is necessary. Here, we present the interactive web application LIFE Spatial Data Visualization System (LIFE-SDVS) that adds a geographical facet to the data integration and analysis workflow of the LIFE research project.
About the authors
Dr. Ying-Chi Lin is a PhD student in Computer Science at Leipzig University. She received her first master degree in Entomology from National Chung-Hsin University, Taiwan and a PhD degree in Environmental Sciences from University of East Anglia, U.K. She has worked as a consultant for a content management software company. She is currently doing research on ontology-based annotation on biomedical forms and the influence of ontology evolution on annotations at the Database Group in Computer Science at Leipzig University and for LIFE.
Universität Leipzig, Institut für Informatik, Augustusplatz 10, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
Dr. Anika Groß is a Postdoc in the Database Group at Leipzig University. She studied bioinformatics at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and received her PhD in Computer Science at Leipzig University in 2014. As a Postdoc she is teaching current topics such as data integration, NoSQL databases and cloud data management. Her research interests include large scale data integration, in particular the mapping and evolution of ontologies and annotated data sets, in the biomedical and other application domains.
Universität Leipzig, Institut für Informatik, Augustusplatz 10, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
Dr. Toralf Kirsten received a PhD in Computer Science (2007) from the Leipzig University. He was a member of the Database and Data Integration group (head: Prof. Erhard Rahm) from 2002–2010 at the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics, Leipzig University. In 2010, he moved to the LIFE Research Center for Civilization Diseases, University of Leipzig, where he heads the Database and Software Development group. From 2011 to 2012, he was external lecturer for database systems at the Telecom University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig and from 2012–2014 visiting professor for database systems at the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, both in part-time. He has strong experiences in data integration, schema and ontology matching with applications in the life science domain.
Universität Leipzig, LIFE Research Center for Civilization Diseases, Philipp-Rosenthal-Straße 27, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
Acknowledgement
This publication is supported by LIFE and LHA. LIFE (Leipzig Research Center for Civilization Diseases) is funded by means of the European Union, by the European Regional Development Fund (ERFD) and by means of the Free State of Saxony within the framework of the excellence initiative. LHA (Leipzig Health Atlas) is funded by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant 031L0026, “i:DSem – Integrative Datensemantik in der Systemmedizin”)
©2017 Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
