WeBCMD: A cross-platform interface for the BCMD modelling framework

Multimodal monitoring of the brain generates a great quantity of data, providing the potential for great insight into both healthy and injured cerebral dynamics. In particular, near-infrared spectroscopy can be used to measure various physiological variables of interest, such as haemoglobin oxygenation and the redox state of cytochrome-c-oxidase, alongside systemic signals, such as blood pressure. Interpreting these measurements is a complex endeavour, and much work has been done to develop mathematical models that can help to provide understanding of the underlying processes that contribute to the overall dynamics. BCMD is a software framework that was developed to run such models. However, obtaining, installing and running this software is no simple task. Here we present WeBCMD, an online environment that attempts to make the process simpler and much more accessible. By leveraging modern web technologies, an extensible and cross-platform package has been created that can also be accessed remotely from the cloud. WeBCMD is available as a Docker image and an online service.