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.

Choose the access path first. There is no single default: the cheapest correct path depends on the session and the task.