Standardization in neuroimaging
Contents
Standardization in neuroimaging¶
Imagine the following two scenarios… (1) You ask the author of a paper you would like to re-analyse the data of and actually find it/get it without the usual “Sorry, can’t find it anymore.” or “This is not a reasonable request.” nonsense. However, upon starting the inspect the data, nothing makes sense. There are strange directories and naming patterns, no basic/in-depth information about files and the content thereof, proprietary formats, etc., thus, basically no option to understand what’s going and re-use the data appropriately. (2) A colleague shares a dataset with you, as you plan to conduct distinct yet complimentary analyses. Unfortunately, instead of just starting to analyse, you have to spent a week asking your colleague about details of the dataset in order to understand it, resulting in a loss of resources for the both of you.
Sounds familiar? Yeah, we all have been there and the reason we encounter this prominent problem of unFAIR data is the lack of standardization and meta-data enrichment.
So, what now? Should we just keep going and either don’t ever (re-)use data efficiently or spending weeks trying to understand a shared dataset? Hard no to both! There are several amazing initiatives concerning the standardization and meta-data enrichment of data to increase FAIRness. Within the realm of neuroimaging, you might have heard about the fantastic Brain Imaging Data Structure or BIDS for short. It’s a community-based and -driven initiative to describe a broad range and various types of data in a simple and easy to adopt manner. Comprising a specification and ecosystem, BIDS is continuously evolving and expanding since its introduction in 2015/2016. Within this session we will explore the rationale and motivation behind it, what it entails exactly, its community and organization, as well as how you can utilize this amazing effort!
Content 💡👩🏽🏫¶
In the following you’ll find the objectives and materials for each of the topics we’ll discuss during this session. Beside a slide deck, there will also be practical hands-on aspects, showcasing BIDS on an MEG dataset with pointers to other modalities such as MRI being provided.
Objectives 📍¶
Learn about the importance of
standardizationandmeta-dataenrichmentGet to know
BIDSand its componentsObtain first practical experience working with
BIDSdatasets
Questions you should be able to answer based on this lecture 🖥️✍🏽📖¶
Why does standardization in neuroimaging matter?
Provide answer here
What are the core aspects of BIDS?
Provide answer here