Customer Stories

posted on 03 August 2008 17:14

The Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine gained a fifty times improvement in scan analysis efficiency when selected a Pillar Axiom storage array.

The Human Neuroimaging Laboratory (HNL) at Baylor College of Medicine needed a cost-effective solution to support the countless number of digital scanning images for its five MRI scanners and manage its extensive research, including world-renowned autism studies. The IT team selected Pillar for its price/performance ratio and storage efficiency.

The HNL at Baylor College of Medicine is a large research laboratory that runs its own IT infrastructure to conduct brain imaging, theoretical neuroscience and behavioral research. The department’s MRI scanners are devoted entirely to educational research, individual and group neurological studies. Recent research released from Baylor has included ongoing autism studies that seek to diagnose, treat and assess the disorder from observed symptoms, brain function and ultimately genetic standpoint.

“The research projects and studies conducted by our department generate an exorbitant amount of data from our MRI scanners, which require high performance and reliability. We looked at several other vendors and they didn’t compare to the high performance and utilization rates from Pillar,” said Justin King, senior system administrator, HNL at Baylor College of Medicine. “We were looking for a solution that combined density, speed and ease of management. Pillar is one of the only companies that is able to accomplish that combination.”

The average research subject generates approximately 300 megabytes of data during an interview or scan, but the HNL runs up to 15 scans a day, generating approximately 20 gigabytes of images on a daily basis. As the data center mushroomed in growth, the department decided to deploy the Pillar Axiom to increase its storage utilization rates and fine tune the performance ratio. As a result, the HNL has seen returns through increased efficiency by allowing staff to analyze the resulting research data of 100 subjects in two hours, where previously it took 10 hours to analyze 10 subjects.

That's a rate improvement from one subject per hour to fifty subjects per hour, a humungous fifty-fold improvement in productivity.

Originally, the HNL was evaluating products from both EMC and IBM, but TEQSYS, a Pillar Data reseller, recommended the Axiom for its ease of use and disk utilization rates. “Pillar was the exact fit for Baylor’s needs,” said Chuck Galvan, Houston - Regional Manager of TEQSYS. “In using the Axiom, the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory has already increased its usable disk capacity by 60 terabytes.”

With that increase in effective disk capacity and with the MRI scan analysis productivity improvement Baylor's HNL must be pretty well pleased with Pillar.

^{[Chris Mellor, using Pillar Data-supplied material.]}