Provenance in neuroimaging

Provenance, the description of the history of a set of data, has grown more important with the proliferation of research consortia-related efforts in neuroimaging. Knowledge about the origin and history of an image is crucial for establishing data and results quality; detailed information about how it was processed, including the specific software routines and operating systems that were used, is necessary for proper interpretation, high fidelity replication and re-use. We have drafted a mechanism for describing provenance in a simple and easy to use environment, alleviating the burden of documentation from the user while still providing a rich description of an image's provenance. This combination of ease of use and highly descriptive metadata should greatly facilitate the collection of provenance and subsequent sharing of data.