XNAT 1.9.3 Release Notes

XNAT 1.9.3 extends support to new imaging modalities and DICOM contrast data, increases capacity for large scale processing and data handling, and offers additional fixes for security and performance. There are several plugin updates that are released in concurrence with XNAT 1.9.3, but this release should not break compatibility for any other plugins.

Recommended plugin updates with this release:

Batch Launch Plugin 0.9.0
Container Service 3.7.3
Distributed Events Plugin 1.2.0
JupyterHub 1.3.0 – includes an update to JupyterHub Image (JHP-121)
OpenID Authentication 1.4.0
Pipeline Engine Plugin 1.2.0

Improve Processing & Importing Performance At Scale

When launching batches of containers in the thousands or tens of thousands, certain event tracking methods had a tendency to become blocked, causing a bottleneck or processing failures. We have removed this constraint and tested with launches of 20k processing jobs. Additional improvements target the ingest of large numbers of image sessions.

As a part of this change, we are allowing and encouraging site administrators to disable the legacy “Automation” feature, which can impact high-volume container launches. We plan to make this disabled by default in future releases.

XNAT-3822: Allow disabling of legacy automation feature
XNAT-8070: Remove synchronization on EventTrackingDataServiceImpl#createOrUpdate
XNAT-8411: Enable dynamic scale-down of JMS consumers after large job launches are completed
XNAT-8415: Improve prearchive throughput when large numbers of image sessions are uploaded to a single project
XNAT-8421: Reduce memory usage in prearchive during large scale uploads
XNAT-8423: Make min/max concurrency configurable (via prefs file) for prearchive operation request listener
XNAT-8501: Fix bug in prearchive error handling when handling sessions where all scans are rejected by DicomEdit script

Initial Support for Added DICOM Modalities and Contrast Data

XNAT has always come with built-in support for the major research imaging modalities – PET, CT, MRI, CR – as well as several others. In XNAT 1.9.3, we are expanding the reach of modality support to include or improve support for additional imaging modalities: Confocal Microscopy (CFM, PA, ANN), Electrophysiology (EEG, ECG, EMG, EOG, RESP, POS), Endoscopy (ES, XC), and medical implants (OBJ, MTL).

Support for these modalities is still in an initial stage. We expect to enhance scan-specific data elements in future releases with feedback from the XNAT community.

Also, DICOM contrast data can now be added to XNAT image sessions. See Adding Contrast Data to Image Sessions for details.

XNAT-8099: Enable extraction of DICOM contrast data in image session / scan data
XNAT-8416: Add support for Endoscopy modalities
XNAT-8417: Add support for Microscopy imaging modalities
XNAT-8418: Ensure support for existing Electrophysiology imaging modalities
XNAT-8419: Add support for new Electrophysiology imaging modalities
XNAT-8420: Add support for Medical Implant imaging modalities
XNAT-8529: Add ability to manually regenerate contrast data in previously-uploaded image sessions
XNAT-8552: Fix modality import order for session building

As part of this update, we have adjusted the order of modalities that XNAT uses to identify incoming image sessions. This may result in changes to how sessions with multiple modalities are identified and classified. See How XNAT translates DICOM metadata .

Improved Support for Remote Authentication Providers

For XNATs that use LDAP or OpenID as authentication providers, this release has a number of improvements. No updates to the LDAP Auth plugin or OpenID Auth plugin are required to take advantage of these improvements, but there is an OpenID Auth plugin version 1.4.0 release that is compatible with XNAT 1.9.3.

XNAT-8321: Fix bug preventing changes in user authorization method
XNAT-8388: Fix bug when creating new users when localdb is disabled
XNAT-8389: Fix bug when creating new user authorizations when localdb is disabled
XNAT-8523: Make username validation consistent for localdb and external auth providers

Change in default Site Admin permissions

In XNAT 1.8.0, we introduced a change that mandated that site administrators also have “All Data Access” by default. We are reversing that change, allowing for the governing principle of “least privilege” to be enforced.

XNAT-8506: Remove hard-coded association between site admin and “All Data Access” permission

Other Updates and Bugfixes

XNAT-8197: Re-enable project override of AutoRun preference
XNAT-8435: Clear cached settings for date formatting when prefs change
XNAT-8438: Prevent NPE when checking for user password upgrades
XNAT-8441: Fix bug in log level admin panel if logger doesn’t have a path
XNAT-8442: Update formio (used in Custom Forms) to version 4.21.7
XNAT-8447: Prevent admin notifications for access attempts on disabled user accounts
XNAT-8503: Fix a bug when sharing subject data into a project with another subject that has the same subject label
XNAT-8513: Prevent NPE when changing the checksum property in site admin preferences
XNAT-8515: Propagate changes to SCP Receivers across all nodes of a multi-node XNAT – requires Distributed Events Plugin 1.2.0.
XNAT-8519: Bugfix in tracking materialized views
XNAT-8532: Bugfix in loading search results if custom form dates use DD/MM/YYYY format
XNAT-8536: Bugfix in DateUtils.msGetTimestamp
XNAT-8539: Bugfix in Base DAO exists() in Framework library
XNAT-8540: Add configurable display of PET Tracer in Recent Activity table – users of Batch Launch Plugin will require an update
XNAT-8557: Improve readability of Project Anon Script editor
XNAT-8559: Add XAPI support for future DICOMweb functionality