ARIES is a service which de-identifies and hosts a large archive of medical research images of cancer accessible for public download. The data are organized as “Collections”, typically patients related by a common disease (e.g. lung cancer), image modality (MRI, CT, etc) or research focus. DICOM is the primary file format used by ARIES for image storage. Supporting data related to the images such as patient outcomes, treatment details, genomics, pathology, and expert analyses are also provided when available.

To enhance the value of ARIES’ collections we also encourage the research community to publish their analysis results. Potential analyses could include tumor segmentations, radiomics features, derived/reprocessed images, and radiologist assessments.

New Collection proposals are reviewed by the ARIES Advisory Group. If approved, the Data Collection Center (DCC) provides hands-on support to image providers to de-identify and curate their data.

After the data has been processed it is made available in four different ways for users to access:

1. Collection summary pages can be accessed from the Collections page which provide a detailed explanation of each data set as well as direct download links to quickly obtain all images and supporting data for a given Collection.
2. The Data Portal provides more advanced searching, browsing and filtering capabilities to select image subsets or download images from multiple Collections which meet search criteria.
3. The Programmatic Interface (REST API) allows software developers to build access to ARIES data into their scripts and applications.
4. ARIES also encourages the creation of Data Analysis Centers (DACs) which provide additional capabilities for visualizing or analyzing ARIES data by connecting to our ARIES Programmatic Interface (REST API) or by mirroring our Collections.