  Exceptional growth in the availability of large-scale clinical imaging
datasets has led to the development of computational infrastructures offering
scientists access to image repositories and associated clinical variables data.
The EU FP7 neuGRID and its follow on neuGRID4You (N4U) project is a leading
e-Infrastructure where neuroscientists can find core services and resources for
brain image analysis. The core component of this e-Infrastructure is the N4U
Virtual Laboratory, which offers an easy access for neuroscientists to a wide
range of datasets and algorithms, pipelines, computational resources, services,
and associated support services. The foundation of this virtual laboratory is a
massive data store plus information services called the Data Atlas that stores
datasets, clinical study data, data dictionaries, algorithm/pipeline
definitions, and provides interfaces for parameterised querying so that
neuroscientists can perform analyses on required datasets. This paper presents
the overall design and development of the Data Atlas, its associated datasets
and indexing and a set of retrieval services that originated from the
development of the N4U Virtual Laboratory in the EU FP7 N4U project in the
light of user requirements.
