NeuroKube: An Automated and Autoscaling Neuroimaging Reconstruction Framework using Cloud Native Computing and A.I.
The neuroscience domain stands out from the field of sciences for its dependence on the study and characterization of complex, intertwining structures. Understanding the complexity of the brain has led to widespread advances in the structure of large-scale computing resources and the design of artificially intelligent analysis systems. However, the scale of problems and data generated continues to grow and outpace the standards and practices of neuroscience. In this paper, we present an automated neuroscience reconstruction framework, called NeuroKube, for large-scale processing and labeling of neuroimage volumes. Automated labels are generated through a machine-learning (ML) workflow, with data-intensive steps feeding through multiple GPU stages and distributed data locations leveraging autoscalable cloud-native deployments on a multi-institution Kubernetes system. Leading-edge hardware and storage empower multiple stages of machine-learning, GPU-accelerated solutions. This demonstrates an abstract approach to allocating the resources and algorithms needed to elucidate the highly complex structures of the brain. We summarize an integrated gateway architecture, and a scalable workflow-driven segmentation and reconstruction environment that brings together image big data with state-of-the-art, extensible machine learning methods.