Radiation Protection Dosimetry Vol. 112, No. 4 © Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved
Pathbase: a new reference resource and database for laboratory mouse pathology
1 Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DY, UK
2 Department of Biomedical Sciences, Hugh Robson Building, George Square, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh EH8 9XD, UK
3 Department of Pathology, University Hospital of Liege, B4000, Liege, Belgium
4 ENEA, Divisione Protezione dell'uomo e degli Ecosistemi, Via Anguillarese 301, 00060, Rome, Italy
5 National Radiological Protection Board, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0RQ, UK
6 Department of Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala 750 07, Sweden
7 Institut fuer Pathologie, GSF-Forschungszentrum fuer Umwelt und Gesundheit, Ingolstaedter Landstrasse 1, Neuherberg, 85764, Germany
8 Department of Clinical Oncology, Churchill Hospital, Oxford OX3 7LJ, UK
9 Applied Radiation Sciences Unit, McMaster University, Nuclear Research Building, Rm 228, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, L8S 4K1, Ontario, Canada
10 Clinical Research Center and Division of Pathology, IMPI, Karolinska Institutet, Huddinge University Hospital, SE-141 86 Stockholm, Sweden
11 Institute of Biomedicine, Developmental Biology, PO Box 63 (Haartmaninkatu 8), FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
12 The Jackson Laboratory, 600 Main Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609, USA
13 Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
* Corresponding author: PS{at}mole.bio.cam.ac.uk
Pathbase (http://www.pathbase.net) is a web accessible database of histopathological images of laboratory mice, developed as a resource for the coding and archiving of data derived from the analysis of mutant or genetically engineered mice and their background strains. The metadata for the images, which allows retrieval and interoperability with other databases, is derived from a series of orthogonal ontologies and controlled vocabularies. One of these controlled vocabularies, MPATH, was developed by the Pathbase Consortium as a formal description of the content of mouse histopathological images. The database currently has over 1000 images on-line with 2000 more under curation and presents a paradigm for the development of future databases dedicated to aspects of experimental biology.