nisupply 2023.3.10

A python module for dealing with unstructured or semi-structured neuroimaging datasets which do not conform to the BIDS data structure

nisupply

A python module for dealing with unstructured or semi-structured neuroimaging datasets which do not conform to the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS).

Aims

Though more and more datasets become available in the standardized BIDS-format, researchers will still often find themelves in situations, were:

1. The dataset is not BIDS-formatted at all (this is often the case with old 'in-house' datasets that were aquired during a time were BIDS didn't exist yet).
2. It is not possible to convert the datasets to BIDS, because you 1.) Don't have access to the original DICOM-files 2.) Not the time and ressources to do so 3.) Lack information, but the maintainer has left your research department
3. The dataset is wrongly BIDS-formatted because it sticks to an outdated BIDS version or because the maintainers made errors (as a consequence, verification tools like the BIDS-validator will throw errors)

As a consequence, one cannot use tools from the BIDS Apps universe which by default require the files to be BIDS-conform in order to work. The idea behind the nisupply module is to provide helper functions that facilitate the often tedious data-wrangling work that can happen with unstructured data sets.

Docs

The nisupply package provides three main modules:

1. nisupply.io for input-output-operations (finding files, renaming them, copying them over to a different directory). The main function within this module is the nisupply.io.get_filepath_df function.
2. nisupply.bids (helper functions to create a BIDS-like data structures. Note, that without having the original DICOM files one will never be able to create 100% valid BIDS-datasets with this module)
3. nisupply.utils (unarchiving files which is needed for neuroimaging software like SPM and other functions that do not fit to the first two modules)

Note

The nisupply module does not provide any functions to convert DICOM files to NIFTI files. If you are looking for tools to do that, check out tools like heudiconv or bidscoin that can do that for you.

Similar Projects

There are similar projects out there following the same idea:

1. Have a look at Stephen Larroque's pathmatcher package which works primarily with regex.
2. The interfaces.io module from nipype (especially the DataFinder class)

The focus of nisupply is to avoid quite unreadable regex-matches as much as possible. It therefore is best suited for semi-structured datsets that are neither completely unordered but also 100% standardized.