CBRAIN is a web-based open-source software developed by the McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (MCIN). It allows researchers to perform computationally intensive analyses on data by connecting them to High-Performance Computing (HPC) facilities across Canada and around the world. CBRAIN connects researchers to the tools and processing power required to handle large datasets and complex processing tools, while simultaneously reducing the technical expertise required to use these resources.
CBRAIN allows users to share and manage data processing projects from anywhere in the world as if it were all in a single data store. The user can define project teams, identify team members who can access the data in that project, and give them access to large volumes of data through a web interface. The project team can then perform operations such as file transfer, archiving, data processing, and content visualization on a remote HPC. The users can monitor task completion, review failure logs, and relaunch tasks with necessary corrections, and once satisfied, transfer the data back to their local repositories.
CBRAIN is currently providing access to a large suite of analytical pipelines for neuroimaging and genetic data analyses, but it is not exclusive to neurological research and can host any software. Software integration is made easy through streamlined procedures designed to maximize research reproducibility. As a pioneering open science platform, CBRAIN is open to contributions from the data science community and strives to make high performance computing available to all.
