Biopattern initiative: towards the development and integration of next-generation information fusion approaches

Even though significant technological advances have been achieved and applied in the medical field from a computational point of view, there is still a significant lag in effectively correlating diverse information sources towards the facilitation of clinical reasoning and improved decision making. In order to address this gab, the Biopattern network is oriented towards the efficient information sharing and flow among the various expert groups in the network, in a consistent and expertise-in dependent fashion. The major effort is focused towards integrating technology for the emerging areas of bio-informatics and the joint consideration of information from medical-, neuro- and bio-informatics. One of Biopattern's pathology areas is brain diseases. Special attention is paid not only in organizing the existing (widely applied) techniques, but also in the development of Next-Generation technological approaches. The target of new developments is in algorithmic solutions for fusion of information from heterogeneous signal sources like MRI and EEG that may function in a consummative way. This paper summarizes the project objectives and intended directions, with emphasis to brain diseases.