How to Locate Your Data
Overview
This guide provides step-by-step instructions for locating data in Flywheel. Use this guide when you need to find specific sessions, acquisitions, or files in your projects.
Prerequisites
- Access to your Flywheel instance
- Permission to at least one project
Choose Your Method
You can locate data in Flywheel using two methods:
- Use Search: Best when you do not know which project contains your data or want to search across multiple projects
- Navigate Through Projects: Best when you know which project contains your data
Method 1: Use Search to Locate Data
Use search when you need to find data across multiple projects or when you know some attributes of the data but not its exact location.
Steps
-
Type a search term in the Search Box on the left sidebar.
View all accessible data
Hit enter on the blank search bar to bring up all data you have access to in Flywheel.
-
Use the filters to narrow down your results:
- Project: Limit search to specific projects
- File Type: Filter by DICOM, NIFTI, etc.
- Modality: Filter by MR, CT, PET, etc.
- Session Timestamp: Filter by date range
- Sex: Filter by subject sex
- Subject Age: Filter by age range
- Custom Fields: Filter by custom metadata
For example, if you uploaded data within the last few days, go to Session Timestamp and adjust the range.
-
Review your results in the appropriate tab:
- Subjects: View subject-level results
- Sessions: View session-level results
- Acquisitions: View acquisition-level results
- Files: View individual files
- Analyses: View analysis results
View an Image from Search Results
- Click the Files tab in your search results.
- Find the file you want to view.
- Click the action menu and select View.
The viewer opens with the image series.
Learn More About Search
Method 2: Navigate Through Projects
Use project navigation when you know which project contains your data.
Steps
-
From your dashboard, click on the Project that contains your data.
The Project description page appears.
-
Click the Sessions tab in the top menu.
The Sessions tab displays all sessions in the project. Each session represents a subject's visit or exam (for example, a single time in the MRI scanner).
Switch to Subject View
To organize data by subject instead of session, click Subject View
. Learn more about Subject View. -
Select the session that contains your data.
All images associated with that session appear in the acquisitions tab.
-
Browse the acquisitions to find your data.
View an Image from a Session
-
Hover over the acquisition that contains the image you want to view.
The image icon (
) appears.
-
Click
.
The viewer opens with the image series.
Working with the Viewer
The Flywheel viewer allows you to annotate and report on images in 2D (slices).
For more information on viewer features, see the viewer documentation.
Troubleshooting
I do not see any projects
Problem: No projects appear on your dashboard.
Solution: Your site administrator needs to give you permission to a project before you can view it. Contact your site administrator to request access to the projects you need.
I cannot find my data with search
Problem: Search does not return the data you are looking for.
Solutions:
- Verify you have permission to the project containing the data. You can only search data in projects you have access to.
- Try using fewer or more general search terms. Basic search uses fuzzy matching which works better with shorter, partial terms.
- Check if filters are too restrictive. Remove filters one at a time to identify which is excluding your data.
- Try using Advanced Search for more precise queries with exact matching.
- Wait a few minutes if data was recently uploaded. New data needs time to be indexed before appearing in search.
I cannot find a specific session in a project
Problem: You know the data is in the project but cannot locate the session.
Solutions:
- Check if you are in the correct project. Verify the project name at the top of the page.
- Try switching between Sessions view and Subject View using the toggle button. Your data may be organized differently than expected.
- Use the search bar within the project to search for the session label or subject label.
- Check the session timestamp filter if you know approximately when the data was collected.
- Verify the session was not moved to a different project. Check with your project administrator.
The image viewer does not open
Problem: Clicking the viewer icon does nothing or shows an error.
Solutions:
- Verify the file is a supported image format (DICOM, NIFTI, etc.). Not all file types can be viewed in the image viewer.
- Check your browser console for errors. Some browser extensions may block the viewer.
- Try refreshing the page and attempting to open the viewer again.
- If the issue persists, try a different browser or clear your browser cache.
Where are my images located?
Problem: You do not know where to find image files in the hierarchy.
Solution: Image files are typically stored under Acquisitions within sessions, though some image data may be attached at other levels depending on how it was uploaded. Navigate to: Project > Sessions > Select a Session > Acquisitions
For more information about how Flywheel organizes data, see The Flywheel Hierarchy.
Search results are empty but I know data exists
Problem: Search returns "No results found" even though you uploaded data.
Solutions:
- Confirm the upload completed successfully. Check the project to verify files are present.
- Allow time for indexing. Newly uploaded data may take several minutes to appear in search results.
- Verify you are searching in the correct projects. Use the Project filter to specify which projects to search.
- Check if your search term matches your data. Try searching with blank search bar (hit enter) to see all your data.