What's New In XNAT

Latest Release:

XNAT 1.9.1 – 1.9.1.1 Release Notes

The latest releases in XNAT and related plugins offer a series of new functionality, including (but not limited to) the following:

Updated & Modernized Dependency Libraries in XNAT 1.9

XNAT 1.9.0 represents a major effort to update foundational libraries and dependencies on which XNAT is built. The motivation for this effort is to move toward compliance with a SOC2 security audit. Read the XNAT 1.9 Release Notes for more details.

These updates also prescribe a set of updates to core XNAT plugins for compatibility with these updates, including:

Container Service 3.6.0
Batch Launch Plugin 0.7.0
XSync 1.8.0
DICOM Query Retrieve 2.1.0

Independent plugin developers should review our Guide to Updating Plugins for XNAT 1.9 Dependencies to determine whether changes will be required for your plugins.

Deprecation of the Pipeline Engine

Earlier releases made XNAT more independent of the Pipeline Engine by removing the dependency on the AutoRun Pipeline by introducing the Snapshot Generation API. As of XNAT 1.9, the Pipeline Engine is only available as a plugin. This move has been made to remove dependencies on libraries that are only in use in the Pipeline Engine, and that can contain

See: Pipeline Engine Plugin

Deprecation of ML & Datasets Plugins

The XNAT ML suite of plugins is no longer being supported, and we are now offering mechanisms to safely remove their functionality from your XNAT installations, should you wish to do so. Read the full Deprecation Notice for XNAT ML and Datasets Plugins for more details.

In the meantime, XNAT community development into the ML world has taken different forms:

The XNAT-OHIF Viewer plugin, developed at ICR UK, introduced support for NVIDIA’s MONAI Label suite of AI-Assisted Annotation tools
The XNAT JupyterHub Integration plugin, developed at Washington University in St Louis, offers expanding support for mounting XNAT data into a Jupyter Notebook and performing exploratory model development

Support for Microscopy in the XNAT OHIF Viewer

As of version 3.7.0 of the XNAT-OHIF Viewer, DICOM Whole Slide Images (WSI) including microscopy data are now supported in the viewing panel.

Read the full news announcement here: OHIF 3.7.0 Release Announcement

Related: XNAT OHIF Viewer Documentation

Support for Docker Engine 25+ included in Container Service 3.5.0 and up

Version 3.5.0 of the Container Service addresses a critical need, offering support for running on Docker Engine v25+. This version of the Docker Engine deprecates several APIs and features that required some re-engineering of the Container Service backend. However, other than updating to the latest plugin version, there is no other update required by XNAT admins to their containers.

Read the full news announcement here: Container Service 3.5.0 Release Announcement.

Support for Multiple Open Dashboards and Notebooks added to JupyterHub Plugin

JupyterHub 1.2.0 adds support for running multiple notebooks and/or dashboards simultaneously, as well as other improvements. See the JupyterHub 1.2.0 Release Notes for more details.