XNAT 1.8.7 Release Notes
XNAT 1.8.7 contains a fairly constrained list of impactful improvements, including a set of processes for surveying and mitigating the effects of a change in DICOM file naming behavior that was introduced in XNAT 1.8.5.
Critical Bugfixes and Improvements
XNAT-7280: Improve performance for data ingestion
Security issues related to pipelines, authentication, and component libraries were also addressed
DICOM File Naming Survey and Mitigation
XNAT 1.8.6.1 restored proper DICOM file naming after XNAT 1.8.5 inadvertently changed the default for files coming in through GradualDicomImporter (e.g., gradual-DICOM, DICOM-zip, C-STORE), unless the rename parameter was set to false. With XNAT 1.8.7, we've added a new feature to survey your DICOM resources for misnamed and duplicated files, review the results, and optionally request renaming. See Surveying and Mitigating XNAT DICOM Resources for instructions and more information. Please note that this feature is not surfaced to the web frontend; survey and mitigation requests are made through REST API calls (available from your browser via swagger).
Plugin Updates Required (if you run mitigation and use datasets or the viewer)
XNAT OHIF Viewer Plugin 3.5 and Datasets Plugin version 1.0.3 have both been released alongside XNAT 1.8.7 to support the mitigation process, and site admins must upgrade to these versions of plugins before running file mitigation if the viewer or datasets are used.
DICOM File Naming and Uniqueness
XNAT 1.8.7 now offers intelligent file matching based on DICOM SOP Instance UID rather than filename, so that changes to the DicomFileNameTemplate setting will not lead to duplicated instances.
We recommend using SOP Instance UID to determine DICOM file uniqueness and have made this the default behavior in XNAT moving forward. However, if you work with noncompliant DICOM where different instances have the same SOP Instance UID but different SOP Class UIDs, you may wish to revert back to using file names, and set your DicomFileNameTemplate setting appropriately. Failure to match these settings to your data will lead to warnings that users will have to override on import.
See DICOM Instance File Naming and Uniqueness for more information.
Related updates:
XNAT-7206: Use the DicomFileNamer property as the default DICOM file naming scheme rather than SOPHashDicomFileNamer
XNAT-7274: Use SOP Instance UID rather than file name to identify duplicate files when importing image data
XNAT-7287: Add the ability to customize the DicomFileNameTemplate setting via the Admin UI, with a strong warning in place for the potential consequences of a poor naming scheme
DicomEdit 6.4
DicomEdit 6.4 boasts an exciting new feature: If-Elseif-Else statements, which enable different blocks of statements to be executed based on conditions detected in the DICOM, along with a number of useful fixes. See DicomEdit 6.4 Release Notes for details. There is no need to install DicomEdit 6.4 separately; the new version is built into the XNAT 1.8.7 release.
To take advantage of DicomEdit 6.4 anonymization features using the XNAT Desktop Client, users must be using version 3.2.1 or later. (3.2.1 release is imminent)
Priority fixes include:
DE-65: Add support for conditional statements to DICOM anonymization scripts
DE-25: Add support for "Describe" keyword to add descriptors to DicomEdit variables
DE-26: Fix bug in sequence item deletion
DE-49: Fix bug in "Assign if exists" behavior
Add Support for Email Notifications to Event Service Actions
In a long-awaited update, the Event Service can now send automated emails as a result of system events or scheduled actions. This enables and expands on highly desirable behavior that was established in the Autorun pipeline, and allows for the full deprecation of the pipeline engine in favor of the Container Service for site admins who wish to move in that direction. Other minor updates were added to the Event Service alongside this change.
XNAT-7241: Support notification on image session archiving without running the Autorun pipeline
XNAT-7203: Add support for using textarea elements in Event Service actions
Other Updates
A series of important but isolated changes and improvements were made that impact XNAT's behavior and performance.
XNAT-7178: Performance fix within the JavaMelody monitoring UI related to reporting on the schema service
XNAT-7179: Fix issues in SCP Receiver configuration validation in the Admin UI
XNAT-7191: Allow for configuration of the default admin password on initial install
XNAT-7249: Display Scan ID on workflow report page entries
XNAT-7273: Fix representation of file merging in the Catalog Service when image sessions are uploaded to a project with Auto-archive set to Overwrite existing files
XNAT-7284: Fix a rare user scenario that caused the Prearchive to crash when using Direct-To-Archive to archive image data to an XNAT with no projects set up
XNAT-7339: Address a performance issue found within the DefaultLoggingService
XNAT-7286 : Experiment restlet should default to format=html to be consistent with other datatypes