Classification Changes in EM 9.0.0

  • Updated

Dear Flywheel users and admins,

There is a major breaking change coming in the EM 9.0.0 version of the Flywheel platform regarding our Classification scheme for MR data. There may be action users on your site need to take, so please read on for more information.

One of our values at Flywheel is our commitment to quality and excellence. This means we consistently seek and consider feedback on our product and services.  A recent example of this practice resulted in one of our customers suggesting changes to our MR modality classification scheme. After much careful consideration, we decided to implement some of these changes. 

Breaking Changes

There are four breaking changes that we decided to implement to make the MR modality classification more accurate and consistent. These changes are: 

  1. Replace ‘ASL’ with ‘Perfusion’ in classification.measurement 
  2. Replace ‘Velocity’ with ‘MRA’ in classification.measurement  
  3. Move ‘FLAIR’ from classification.measurement to classification.feature
  4. Move ‘Spectroscopy’ from classification.measurement to classification.intent

Impacts

The Flywheel features impacted by these breaking changes fall into the following categories:

  1. Classification of files
  2. Flywheel-maintained Gears
    1. CNI pfile-mr-classifier (Spectroscopy) - Current Version: 1.8.0
    2. GRP-3B (Spectroscopy) - Current Version: 0.2.3
    3. Scitran parrec-mr-classifier - Current Version: 1.1.1
    4. CNI dicom-mr-classifier - Current Version: 2.1.0
    5. Scitran dicom-mr-classifier - Current Version: 0.8.2
  3. Gear Rules containing the above affected gears
  4. Gear Rules containing `ASL` or `Velocity`
  5. User maintained Gears
  6. User SDK scripts

Flywheel is currently finalizing the testing of the resolutions of #1-#3. Flywheel will make the necessary changes so that users will not need to take any actions for these changes to take effect. The classifications of all files and any affected Gear Rules will be converted by Flywheel. Flywheel-maintained Gears will get new major release versions of the gears that will be installed on sites at the time of the classification change. Previous versions of these gears will be disabled on Flywheel versions with these breaking changes.

For impacts #4 - #6, users will need to review their Gear Rules, SDK scripts, and gears they have created  to make sure they are not affected by these breaking changes. 

Other Changes

Beyond those breaking changes, new classifications have been added. These additions will provide more options to our customers to be specific about the data they are collecting. These additions will not cause any breaking changes for our users.

  1. Add the following keys to classification.measurement:
    1.  'CEST', 'T1rho', 'SVS', 'CSI', 'EPSI', 'BOLD', 'Phoenix'
  2. Add the following keys to classification.features
    1. '2D', 'AAscout', 'Spin-Echo', 'Gradient-Echo', 'EPI', 'WASSR', 'FAIR', 'FAIREST', 'PASL', 'EPISTAR', 'PICORE', 'pCASL', 'MPRAGE', 'MP2RAGE', 'FLAIR', 'SWI', 'QSM', 'RMS', 'DTI', 'DSI', 'DKI', 'HARDI', 'NODDI', 'Water-Reference', 'Transmit-Reference', 'SBRef', 'Uniform', 'Singlerep', 'QC', 'TRACE', 'FA', 'MIP', 'Navigator', 'Contrast-Agent', 'Phase-Contrast', 'TOF', 'VASO', 'iVASO', 'DSC', 'DCE', 'Task', 'Resting-State', 'PRESS', 'STEAM', 'M0', 'Phase-Reversed', 'Spiral', 'SPGR'