Data creates more data : A study of the Datasets used by Virtual Heart Research Team at University of Malaya

Abstract

Data is an important component in any reasearch. Data can be newly acquired at the initial stage of a research project or it can be an already available data which has been stored somewhere. In the case of the research conducted by a research team at University of Malaya, the datasets used are cardiac data. These datasets will be processed and most often will yield another new set of data. In this paper, datasets used by a group of researchers in the area of virtual heart modelling in the Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, Univeristy of Malaya, were studied to understand the transformation of the datasets from one form into another. This paper will illustrate the different forms and formats of the datasets. For example, a dataset used by this group can transform from a simple set of ASCII data into a very complex mathematical model. On the other hand, an image dataset can be processed to produce a set of textual or numeric data in ASCII form. The final objective of this study is to get a set of requirements to assist in the development of a data repository for the research group. Because of the multiple forms and formats of the data involved, the design and development of the repository will be a challenging task.