Using imaging to combat a pandemic: rationale for developing the UK National COVID-19 Chest Imaging Database. European Respiratory Journal

Background: The scale of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the acquisition of huge volumes of imaging data.
Traditionally, research using imaging data constituted collation of data within single hospitals or groups of hospitals at most. Endeavours on a local scale have the constraint that not all patient subgroups or disease manifestations might be captured in the collected data. It has long been recognised that there is an acute need to curate larger, more comprehensive datasets to better understand a disease.