nitrc:Testimonials

Time Saving

"The 1000 Functional Connectomes project, whose data were shared via NITRC, has in my opinion completely revitalized data sharing within the field of fMRI research... I appreciate the lightweight approach to data sharing that has been taken, which has made the data very easy to access and use... We have recently begun to use the NITRC-CE on AWS, and have found that it has saved us substantial time in setting up a computational environment for fMRI data analysis."
- Stanford University

"We have just completed running structural connectomes on 468 runs (234 subjects pre/post-intervention) using NITRC-CE on AWS Marketplace. We launched 200 machines at a time, using FSL and Freesurfer, to get results in 30 hours per subject. With a pre-set quota, it took a week to run all of them which is amazing given how much compute was required. The cost was 25% less than initially imagined. Thanks for making this resource available!"
- Brad Sutton, Ph.D., University of Illinois

"[I] needed a solution that would quickly and reliably conduct image processing for Parkinson’s research. [I] found the NITRC Computational Environment (NITRC-CE) on AWS Marketplace, reducing the time required to process neuroimaging data by 85%.... allow[ing] me to complete a critical stage of my research in 2 days, instead of 2 weeks."
- Erik Ziegler, Marie Curie ESR, University of Liège

"I was looking for data to create a brain atlas based on resting-state data and could immediately have access to several project's data in one central place. I believe this saved us several weeks and helped us select the best tools and conduct research of better quality. In short, NITRC has become a standard tool in neuroimaging research, its usefulness does not need to be demonstrated anymore."
- Major US Academic Imaging Center

"[NITRC] resources… have been helpful in saving steps and weeks in time for our large developmental data sets. We plan to build on the infrastructure provided by the NITRC to better support distribution of our neuroimaging data as part of NIH mandated data sharing."
- Major US Academic Research Institute

"NITRC has proven to be a valuable research resource for my lab and the broader neuroimaging community. …we have downloaded various software packages from NITRC and used them to perform a variety of neuroimaging tasks, as well as compare our own software algorithms against established methods. Also, the software system we distribute via NITRC… has been downloaded 30 times and at least one other neuroimaging lab has reviewed a part of it on NITRC… Because this software performs low-level data management, it is usually not mentioned in publications, but it has had a diffuse, time-saving impact on my lab and those of my collaborators."

Publishing Power

"NITRC is the main resource that I have used to download thousands of brain scans curated by INDI initiative. Without that data, the key (highest impact) research papers would not have happened."
-Erin W Dickie, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health/ University of Toronto

"The NITRC is the best organization to share the state-of-art achievement in the neuroscience and medical research. It boosts the fascinating research activity in life science. We always download [tools] for our research use in medical imaging with clinical application. These research are in the process of being published."

"Open-source software and open-access resources are a powerful strength of the neuroimaging community, and NITRC has been essential in maintaining this philosophy. Personally, I have downloaded software that assisted with …publication."

"We are a long time user of NITRC....are very involved with NITRC...we have always been very pleased with the responses we’ve had when we posed questions or needed help. When we develop something new or send a grant proposal to the NIH or NSF we definitely include NITRC as a place to help distribute novel imaging and image processing tools. Keep up the great work."
- Major US Academic Research & Imaging Center

"I have published… papers in which I have used tools downloaded from the NITRC."

Collaborative Community

"NITRC is a critical part of the neuroscience tool ecosystem."
-Adam Thomas, NIMH

"NITRC is the first place I look if I want to know what neuroimaging analysis packages are available. It truly serves as a clearinghouse, a centralized spot to look for what's available to the research community. It is an excellent site for disseminating software and tools; as soon as anyone says they have neuroimaging-related software to share I always ask, is it on NITRC?"

"We recently moved all our software dissemination to NITRC and we couldn't be happier! No longer does the original developer lose track of their projects after leaving the lab and we can maintain user groups and/or discussion forums with ease. The NITRC moderators have always gone above and beyond to ensure that the users are taken care of and I will highly recommend the platform for academic software distribution."
- Sarthak Pati, Lead Software Developer, CBICA, University of Pennsylvania

"I plan to use this project as a collaboration tool to share my research code in Neuroimaging with my collaborators. I opted for NITRC because of its Wiki, Forum, Mailing List, and Survey functionalities. I heard good reviews of NITRC and will be happy to try it out. Thank you for this great resource to foster research in our field!"
- Administrator of three listed tools that chose NITRC as their only distribution mechanism

"I believe that NITRC is a great service, I regularly use it to look for new tools. I also use it to look for updates of tools I have used for some time."

"NITRC serves a valuable role to the community in providing a robust option for hosting tools and/or data for owners who do not have institutional resources available to them for hosting. My personal opinion regarding the future of neuroimaging research is that there will be valuable contributions made by teams of people working together collaboratively. This is likely to include not only the basic/clinical neuroscientists but also algorithm developers, computer scientists, data mining experts, etc. NITRC having an open-source, shared environment where teams can access data, compute resources."
- Associate Director, major US hospital

"Chairing of the Neurotechnology B Study Section, we consistently hear reviewers use NITRC as one of the most valuable sources for determining whether a particular neuroimaging tool - or other application - is used by the community. The tool or application's user ratings and reviews, numbers of downloads, and other activity such as forum discussions and documentation, are cited frequently as a way to know whether a tool is in widespread use and has value. Also, many PIs state that their tool will be listed on NITRC so as to increase the potential impact of the tool by getting information about it out to a large section of the community."

"As a software contributor, NITRC has been very useful in distributing my software. As it has a rather large database attached to it, it requires significant bandwidth and storage. If not for NITRC's facilities, we would have needed funding to purchase a much better web service for the lab's website, not to mention to pay for a website that is as easy to use as it is. Finally, it is very useful to have a single place to submit (or link) one's software/data that requires no advertising effort - most everyone looking for brain imaging software knows where to go to get it now. NITRC has been a huge assistance to the medical image software community and to neuroscience researchers. It would be hard to imagine going forward without the NITRC resource."
- Administrator of one listed tool on NITRC

"I believe that NITRC has become an invaluable service to my organization…and strongly feel that it plays a crucial role in the neuroinformatics and neuroimaging community."
- Administrator of two listed tools; one chose NITRC as its only distribution mechanism

"NITRC has been a huge assistance to the medical image software community and to neuroscience researchers….

• First, it has been useful to us in providing a group development environment for our software. Although it is certainly possible to find other environments that provide this resource, the commonality of software on NITRC makes it particularly desirable as the development and the delivery locations are the same.
• Second, NITRC has been a great resource to identify tools that might be of most use to the community. From comments provided to measures of popularity, the site provides valuable information.
• Third, as we all drive toward "best practices" and maximum usability, it is very useful to have the software made searchable according to multiple criteria, including importantly the license restrictions.
• Finally, the NITRC developers have been very responsive to users’ needs while dutifully aware of the need for a stable, dependable website. It is a professional resource that is a bit rare (unfortunately) in the academic software development setting…"

- Administrator of five listed tools that chose NITRC as their only distribution mechanism

"First and foremost, it creates a single central destination where tool users and tool developers can fulfill each other’s needs. For users, NITRC offers the ability to make sense of a large number of available tools and to use rankings and comments by other users to quickly make decisions about adopting tools. For developers, NITRC offers a unique opportunity to reach potential users, as well as to collect essential feedback about their tools."
- Administrator of three listed tools; two chose NITRC as its only distribution mechanism

"I think you guys are doing a fantastic job …. We have now started moving all our tool development onto NITRC due to the excellent infrastructure and would have tremendous problems going back to the former local setup. Especially in today’s research world, where we collaborate on several projects with multiple sites to develop jointly neuroimaging tools, it is a necessity to have a central resource like NITRC. On top of the high quality of the NITRC resources, it is also a ‘neutral’ resource. In our earlier development work, the tool sites were always local to a university and thus in cross-site development, there was always a discussion for which university to host the tools. Not just has that discussion been eliminated, the services offered by NITRC are unparalleled as compared to local setups and thus have considerably simplified the dissemination of our tools…"
- Administrator of eight listed tools that chose NITRC as their only distribution mechanism

"I am the lead developer of …a popular medical image segmentation tool [and]… would like to … express my sincere and thorough satisfaction with this excellent resource. NITRC serves a role that is unique and highly useful to neuroimaging tool developers like me. First and foremost, it creates a single central destination where tool users and tool developers can fulfill each other's needs. For users, NITRC offers the ability to make sense of a large number of available tools and to use rankings and comments by other users to quickly make decisions about adopting tools. For developers, NITRC offers a unique opportunity to reach potential users, as well as to collect essential feedback about their tools. In addition, NITRC offers extensive facilities for software development and maintenance….Lastly, NITRC has put together an excellent team of motivated people... This team has been extremely responsive to developer needs and has made continuous tangible improvements to NITRC….For NIH-funded open-source software tools … reaching as many users as possible is one of our biggest goals, as that reduces the per-user cost of tool development and generates greater value for the NIH investment. … I feel strongly that NITRC is an excellent resource from which both users and developers of neuroimaging tools benefit strongly…"
- Administrator of three listed tools that chose NITRC as their only distribution mechanism

"For us, the decision to use NITRC for hosting our tools and resources, rather than local servers, was largely based on the consideration that we do not want to run publicized services (e.g., bug tracker, SVN) on our lab machines and thus invite intruders along with the proper users. So basically, by having NITRC, labs like ours can keep their IT systems, which contain sensitive data, shut off and more secure. As far as funding for our current projects is concerned, we decided to go NITRC only after receiving funding for hosting one project… but having NITRC around allowed us to easily build a presence for a second project… for which there was no infrastructure funding. Basically, NITRC allowed us to make an ad hoc decision to share data that was created as a by-product of other research without its own financial resources."
- Administrator of two listed tools that chose NITRC as their only distribution mechanism

"The NITRC project provides an essential service to the fields of basic and clinical translational neuroscience research. In my role as an author and editor in the domain of neuroimaging, I use NITRC as a resource for archiving essential information about image analysis software and sharable data sets. In my role as a teacher and training director, I use NITRC as a resource for educating the next generation of image analysis developers/programmers as well as applied basic and clinical scientists. Most if not all of the software analysis tools in current use are indexed here. The community built around this resource is growing."

"I think NITRC is a great website…. I have used it to see if there are new tools available and if a tool I am thinking of creating is already available. Combining the internet and neuroimaging has to be the way forward…"

"We are routinely using tool downloads and documentation from NITRC in our research. When I am looking for a tool to do a specific job (e.g. DTI registration), the place I will go to look for the best tool is NITRC. If it's not on NITRC then it does not exist. NITRC provides an immense resource for the field in general and to my lab in specific. Our papers usually do not cite/acknowledge NITRC directly, but we regularly acknowledge tools featured on NITRC…"

"We would like to extend our sincere thanks for providing a platform to share our solutions with the rest of the research community. Since sharing our resources on NITRC we've seen a large amount of incoming web traffic from your site. These referrals tend to be very interested visitors as they spend double the average amount of time on our site compared to other visitors."

"I'm not sure how much non-US feedback helps…but I'm a regular user of nitrc.org. I use it to learn about existing tools in specific areas like non-uniformity correction, but also to see what is available other than what our lab is currently using. I also like the conferences and workshop listings."

"NITRC has turned out to be very helpful as a collaboration site, and I believe it is well worth sustaining. We are a 'Core' group … meaning our primary function is to support the research community (develop methods, write software, provide instruction, etc). To this end, the NITRC site has been very useful for things like…a host site for collaboration on file formats, used for data exchange between software packages… Such collaboration generally spans groups across the US (or world), and it is very useful to have a centralized site that everyone has access to….NITRC is a very cost-effective tool for the research community as a whole. This site takes large burdens off of research groups, allowing them to focus on the research, rather than on how to administer a good website. One team can excel at making a useful website. Individual groups will clearly not tend to do so well."

"I have downloaded several tools from NITRC …. I find the site useful as a consolidated location for neuroimaging resources."

Easy

"NITRC is an AMAZING resource and a one-stop-shop for getting so many resources like open-source data and shared software. The organization and documentation are great, and it has been a massive support for the field of neuroimaging."
- Sook-Lei Liew, Ph.D., OTR/L, Assistant Professor, University of Southern California

"NITRC is the go-to site to find neuroimaging tools and resources. I recommend it and use it often."
-Andrew J. Worth, Neuromorphometrics, Inc.

"When I moved [universities], there was no impact on the development, maintenance, and public distribution of the resources I share on NITRC...these NIH funded resources have stayed publicly available with no additional work on my part to negotiate a release from one institution another, arrange and configure new storage...our universities accept the shared copyright and intellectual property agreements captured by the NITRC infrastructure. Other public researches such as GitHub or SourceForge simply do not provide the same capabilities for hosting complex projects with nuanced license structures..."
- Vanderbilt University

"My lab's been using the CONN toolbox a lot recently, and we've downloaded it and its upgrades from [NITRC-R] multiple times this year, as well as using the discussion forum to post help requests and get feedback on how to do various analyses. NITRC's been invaluable in making that software usable for us."
- Associate Professor, major US university

Cost-efficient

"NITRC has facilitated new groups with interests in signal processing, mathematics, and statistics into medical imaging, all the while remaining immensely cost-effective. Even if we had burned...DVDs...we would have required hundreds of thousands of dollars and would have set us back by several months if not years...Needless to say, we could not have done it without NITRC... More than 70% of the [Conference on Resting State Connectivity] listed [NITRC-CE] as a highlight of the workshop."
- New Jersey's Science & Technology University

"I use NITRC to facilitate access to valuable hosted data sets. I am frequently asked where someone can obtain freely shared neuroimaging data of various sorts. NITRC is awesome for helping algorithm developers, teachers, and clinician scientists to find the data they need."
- Associate Director, major US hospital

"We have just completed running structural connectomes on 468 runs (234 subjects pre/post-intervention) using NITRC-CE on AWS Marketplace. The cost is very predictable once you start calculating the time and cost per hour; as a result, our estimate was very accurate. The total cost for 200 instances of computing for a week was $3,100. Thanks for making this resource available!"
- Brad Sutton, Ph.D., University of Illinois

"You are awesome! This is the type of service that wins awards!... It has greatly reduced the cost of managing [our] software development, and it has been an incredible resource for sharing resources with collaborators around the world."
- Administrator of 27 listed tools; 25 chose NITRC as their only distribution mechanism

"All my funding and downloads for my … analysis software has come from NITRC, so yes it has been very helpful!"
- Administrator of one listed tool that chose NITRC as its only distribution mechanism

"[We] are extremely satisfied with our interactions with NITRC…. We depend on NITRC to freely distribute our community-based software … We feel that NITRC is an excellent resource for both experienced and new researchers in the field. It provides a comprehensive view of available neuroimaging tools and resources, and serves to free up time for the tool generators to focus on tool development."
- Administrator of one listed tool on NITRC

Educational Tool

"NITRC has been the reference resource since when I enter the neuroimaging field, coming from physics. Data sharing was less common than today, and I was amazed by what I found there. Lately, I had the chance to discover and use the Cloud Computing Environment, which made my life much easier as a teacher."
- Daniele Marinazzo, Ghent University, Belgium

"NITRC continues to be such a phenomenal resource. I mention it in every semester course that I teach at MIT/Harvard as well as all of the short courses at MGH and every talk that I give because I truly believe that NITRC is simply spectacular."
- MIT

"NITRC-CE in the learning environment: The cloud compute services offered through NITRC allowed us to successfully run an international educational workshop for researchers in conjunction with the Fourth Biennial Conference on Resting State / Brain Connectivity. NITRC was absolutely key to establishing a successful course for over 100 participants with extremely different backgrounds. The main goal of the pre-conference workshop was to provide a hands-on demo on various neuroimaging applications. The centralized solution that was provided by the NITRC-CE (with 4 cores, 15 GB memory) was phenomenally efficient such that there were no glitches during the software demo. NITRC saved 2-5 hours of download, installation, and tech-support time per user. More importantly, it allowed instructors to focus on teaching in a uniform environment with immediate data and computation access, across the entire group. The course couldn’t have been such a success without NITRC-CE."
- Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, Research Scientist, MIT, March 2015

"Just a note of thanks to you and those involved in Candishare. We found these scans via the NITRC portal and we are using these scans in an undergraduate neuroscience lab at UCLA. Essentially, the undergrads are doing a partial replication of the study by Frazier et al. (2008). I also have a group of honors undergraduate students examining other parts of the brain in this data set. I want to thank you and all those involved in making this resource available. It is extremely exciting to use and has great utility as a pedagogical resource."
- UCLA

"I use NITRC regularly when I am training/educating all levels of folks (undergraduates, graduate students, fellows, research assistants, faculty). I find having a single site where all robustly built and tested neuroimaging data analysis software tools are hosted is VERY useful in guiding learners to understand that there are different ways to accomplish the same goals. It is helpful to help them learn how to determine which software tools are best for what applications. It is great to have it as a guide for where to find educational resources/ tutorials for each of the tools where they are available."
- Associate Director, major US hospital

New Pathways for Science

"Fact: I have frequently heard from NIH study sections that reviewers asked if a grant application shares their data or informatics tools on NITRC. NITRC has become a de facto standard mechanism for sharing neuroimaging and related data and tools."
- NITRC NIH Project Officer

"The 1000 Functional Connectomes project, whose data were shared via NITRC, has in my opinion completely revitalized data sharing within the field of fMRI research... I appreciate the lightweight approach to data sharing that has been taken, which has made the data very easy to access and use…”
- Stanford University

Other

"Just wanted to say that the new layout on the NITRC site looks fantastic. Please pass my thanks to the people who helped to update it."
- Administrator of one listed tool that chose NITRC as its only distribution mechanism

"Wow! I love the new site... even more than the old site."
- Administrator/developer of over 10 listed tools that chose NITRC as their only distribution mechanism

"So far I really like [the redesign], not just the Participate! box, but the whole new arrangement of the project pages, as well as the site's front page. I think the "download now” box is really well done….I'm still finding new things… I haven't found anything to complain about so far, and I think the redesign makes much better use of real estate (and is slicker at the same time)….I think it's a real step forward."
- Administrator of one listed tool on NITRC; member of a NITRC community resource

"NITRC is a fantastic software resource that is really just starting to get off the ground as more people are finding out about it."

"I have found NITRC to be incredibly informative and useful. The longer it is able to stay around the more popular it will become. There is nothing else like it on the web that I have found, and it is very well-formatted and maintained…"

"I appreciate the NITRC site a lot - it is a kind of web 2.0 service for the imaging neuroscience community and facilitates data sharing and communication about new tools and resources. I used it for my research however most of the results were not published yet..."

"Thanks for creating this open space for sharing."