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Imaging Data Commons Cancer Imaging

Lets the agent find, query, and download public NCI cancer imaging datasets (CT, MR, PET, pathology).

Source Download skill
Repository
K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills
Stars
55,780
Licence
MIT
Files
13 files

What it does

Once installed, the agent knows how to search the National Cancer Institute Imaging Data Commons, a public archive of cancer scans and slide images. It can count and filter collections by cancer type, modality, or body site, check licences and citations, generate viewer links, and download DICOM files. It picks the lightest access route: a read-only REST API for simple questions, or the idc-index Python client for downloads and analysis.

Great for

  • Researchers looking for public cancer CT, MR, PET or pathology images
  • Data scientists building cohorts from IDC metadata with SQL
  • Students who need licence and citation details for IDC datasets

Skip it if

  • Patient-identifiable or clinical care decisions: the data is for research and carries per-collection licences (mostly CC-BY, some CC-NC) that must be respected
  • Commercial use without checking each collection's licence, since some are non-commercial

Try asking

  • “How many CT collections in IDC are for lung cancer, and what licences do they use?”
  • “Download the DICOM series for these SeriesInstanceUIDs into a local folder”
  • “Write a SQL query that counts pathology slides by anatomical site”
  • “Give me the citation and viewer link for this IDC collection”
Step-by-step guide: how to use Imaging Data Commons Cancer ImagingInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 13 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.

    imaging-data-commons.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip imaging-data-commons.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip imaging-data-commons.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Ask for metadata questions first; the agent can answer via the REST API without installing anything.
  • Check the licence of each collection before reusing or publishing data.
  • Run scripts/check_version.py in the intended Python environment, and use a virtual environment for the install.

What's inside

  • references/bigquery_guide.md
  • references/cli_guide.md
  • references/clinical_data_guide.md
  • references/cloud_storage_guide.md
  • references/dicomweb_guide.md
  • references/digital_pathology_guide.md
  • references/index_tables_guide.md
  • references/licensing_and_citation.md
  • references/mcp_guide.md
  • references/parquet_access_guide.md
  • references/rest_api_guide.md
  • references/sql_patterns.md
  • SKILL.md

Redistributed unmodified from K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.