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ezBIDS: The open cloud service for automated, validated DICOM to BIDS conversion
Daniel Levitas, Soichi Hayashi, Franco Pestilli
Presenting author:
Daniel Levitas
Over the past several years there has been a concerted effort within the neuroimaging field to organize and standardize imaging data according to the specifications laid out in the Brain Imaging Dataset Structure standard (BIDS; Gorgolewski et al., 2016). Adhering to this standard is of great benefit for data sharing and replication of previous studies. Yet, as of today the process of turning raw DICOM data into BIDS file structure is nontrivial and requires a considerable amount of time as well as advanced software skills. Currently, a few dozen open-source projects have developed code to facilitate the conversion process. However, all these projects require the use of a Linux terminal and some basic programming skills; no tool currently exists targeting a broader non-technical community with a diverse background spanning from no to limited coding skills. To broaden the reach and adoption of the BIDS standard, more mechanisms are necessary that can lower the barrier of entry to data standardization. To this end, we present ezBIDS, a web-based hosted DICOM to BIDS conversion service, that is publicly available at https://brainlife.io/ezbids but can also be deployed on other resources. ezBIDS requires neither installation nor Linux terminal knowledge. The cloud service-based model of ezBIDS allows researchers to upload their DICOM datasets to be automatically organized into BIDS-compliant datasets, with users having the ability to make modifications during the conversion process. ezBIDS is a new generation cloud service for data standardization that seeks to advance the neuroimaging field in the efforts to promote FAIR principles.