An Open-Source Monitoring Framework for Data Exploration and Progress Tracking in Multi-Center Radiology Studies

2026-06-15

AI Summary

This work addresses the inefficiencies in multicenter radiology research caused by reliance on manual communication and shared spreadsheets, which hinder timely data exploration and coordination. The authors propose the first lightweight, open-source monitoring framework tailored for multicenter medical imaging studies, built upon the Grafana-Prometheus stack. By aggregating distributed metrics and offering configurable visualization dashboards, the framework enables privacy-preserving cross-institutional monitoring without sharing raw data. It is deeply integrated into the Kaapana platform and has been deployed across 38 university hospitals within Germany’s RACOON consortium, significantly enhancing transparency and operational efficiency in research coordination. The source code is publicly available.

Abstract

Multi-center studies are crucial for advancing medical and radiological research. Data exploration, collaboration discovery, and study progress monitoring are essential for maximizing their potential. However, in practice these processes often rely on manual communication and shared tables, which quickly become outdated and hinder efficient coordination in large distributed studies. This highlights the need for dedicated monitoring solutions that provide transparent and up-to-date insights into study progress. We propose a lightweight, open-source monitoring architecture for multi-center studies based on the widely used Grafana-Prometheus stack. The framework collects aggregated monitoring metrics from distributed study sites and visualizes them through configurable dashboards. As a real-world deployment example, the framework is integrated into the medical imaging platform Kaapana and evaluated within a large multi-center research network. By deploying our solution within the Germany-wide RACOON consortium, we demonstrate its ability to enable privacy-preserving data exploration and study progress monitoring across all 38 German university clinics. The monitoring framework supports transparent coordination of distributed research activities and can facilitate more efficient management of large-scale multi-center studies. The source code and Kaapana integration are publicly available at https://github.com/MIC-DKFZ/study-monitoring-kaapana.

Problem

• multi-center studies
• study progress monitoring
• data exploration
• distributed research coordination
• radiology research

Innovation

• open-source monitoring
• multi-center studies
• Grafana-Prometheus
• privacy-preserving data exploration
• study progress tracking