Imaging Data Commons

This gives Claude direct access to the NCI's Imaging Data Commons, a public repository of cancer imaging data including CT, MR, PET scans, and pathology slides. You query metadata with SQL, download DICOM files, and generate browser viewer URLs without needing authentication. The skill covers 23 releases of IDC data organized into collections and analysis results (like segmentations and AI annotations). Built on the idc-index Python package with comprehensive guides for clinical data joins, cloud storage access, and digital pathology workflows. Useful when you need training data for medical imaging models or want to explore large scale radiology datasets without setting up your own PACS infrastructure. All data has individual licensing, mostly CC-BY with some non-commercial restrictions.

skills.sh installs: 2K
GitHub stars: 56.6K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

View on GitHub

Install

$ npx -y skills add k-dense-ai/scientific-agent-skills --skill imaging-data-commons --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Imaging Data Commons

Overview

Query and download public cancer imaging data from the National Cancer Institute Imaging Data Commons (IDC). No authentication required for data access.

Expected network access: IDC metadata is reachable three ways — a bundled local DuckDB index (offline after installation; additional indices are fetched from GitHub and clinical tables from S3), or the hosted IDC service over MCP or REST (api.imaging.datacommons.cancer.gov, no authentication). File downloads use public GCS (storage.googleapis.com) and AWS S3 (s3.amazonaws.com) — no authentication required. DICOMweb access uses either the public IDC proxy (proxy.imaging.datacommons.cancer.gov, no auth) or the Google Cloud Healthcare API (healthcare.googleapis.com, requires GCP authentication). Optional BigQuery queries (bigquery.googleapis.com) also require GCP authentication. Citation resolution contacts DOI services. Public IDC routes require no credentials; optional Google clients use Application Default Credentials.

Reviewed 2026-09-30: idc-index 0.12.5, idc-index-data 24.2.2, IDC v24; hosted API 3.0.0b3. Recheck at use time.

SKILL.md on GitHub