Note: Original Document Jan 2023
Introduction
Discovery Admin is built on open source XNAT and provides you the ability to configure connections between PACS or VNA, index the DICOM metadata, which will provide you with a high level view of the imaging data. Discovery Admin also enables you to manage data requests that come from Discovery Dashboard and allows uploading of imaging study identifiers. Data requests can then be pulled as full imaging studies from your clinical imaging system and staged for further processing and analysis.
Overview
This document provides detailed instructions on how to configure your Discovery Admin site.
Instructions
This section provides numerous instruction steps that will assist the reader.
Enable Discovery Feature for the Site
Enabling this feature will enable the link to the Discovery Dashboard in the top navigation bar.
For more on XNAT features in general one can visit:
https://wiki.xnat.org/documentation/xnat-administration/enabling-features-at-the-site-wide-level
To enable the Discovery Feature, follow the below:
1. Navigate to Administer
2. Manage Features (one may need to enable Features on your site which you can do with a POST to /xapi/siteConfig with the below request body)
'{"uiShowAdminManageSiteFeatures":true}' -H "Content-Type:application/json"
One can also navigate directly to Manage Features as seen below:
{xnat_host}/app/template/ManageFeatures.vm
Enable Open URL
URL: https://wiki.xnat.org/display/XAPI/Plugin+Open+URL+Authorization+API
To enable Open URL, follow the steps below:
1. Navigate to Administer
2. Select Site Administration
3. Installed Plugins
4. Then enable the Discovery related open URL
Add New PACS Configuration
One will need to add a PACS configuration in order to index and extract images.
From the existing DICOM Query Retrieve plugin, add any number of external PACS systems to index using the Discovery plugin. The remote PACS system must support query retrieval and move operations.
Add Two (2) New DICOM SCP Receivers
In order for your PACS to send information back to Discovery Admin, one will need to configure DICOM SCP receivers.
The plugin required two (2) new DICOM receivers to use for indexing and archiving. Both of these listeners should be assigned the iqObjectIdentifier and the FULL ingestion title can have ‘Direct to Archive’ Enabled if desired.
After configuring, the below receivers should be visible and shown below.
Configure Discovery Receivers
To configure the Discovery Receivers, perform the following steps:
1. Under Administer
2. Select Plugin Settings
3. Then IQ Plugin
4. To configure add Discovery AETitles for indexing and ‘indexing + archiving’ to Discovery config
Index Support
Data in Discovery can be indexed via the admin pages described below. In this mode a single file from each series will be moved to this indexing only AETitle and used to create the Discovery indexes for searching. The original instance file will not be saved in XNAT.
Index and Archive Support
Alternatively, data can be pushed to the Discovery enabled archiving AE title and the DICOM images will be indexed AND archived into the XNAT system. This is a mechanism to populate XNAT and index at the same time.
Enable MIRRIR Link Requests
To minimize data copying, a linking mechanism is used to stage data in cohort projects. One can link the same imaging study into multiple projects without having to re-download from PACS and the staged copies will not be modified.
To enable the MIRRIR Link Requests follow the steps below:
1. Select Under Administer
2. Then select Plugin Settings
3. Now select the MIRRIR Link Request Plugin
4. Then Configuration
The MIRRIR link plugin provided the mechanism to link data from one project to another using a new sharing mechanism. In this plugin the metadata for a session is duplicate but the underlying files in the session are linked. This provides the flexibility of having access to your data and being able to edit the metadata but avoiding pixel duplication on the filesystem. The plugin can be configured to avoid particular scans based on DICOM header fields values or matching series description entries during the linking process.
Discovery Admin Usage
Once everything is configured, please continue to the Discovery Admin User Guide for more information on indexing and requesting data from a PACS.
Resources