Hi BIDS experts,
I am currently working with different BIDS datasets, and have several questions regarding the long term maintainence of BIDS dataset. Usually, I use heuDiCov to do the conversion/organization from dicom to nifti BIDS and do the preprocessing with fMRIPrep, etc. I am wondering how could we update the BIDS dataset when we have new images coming to the existing BIDS dataset, do we have tools for this purpose? For examle:
What are the recommendations (practical guides) for adding/deleting or changing subjects (images of new subjects) for the existing BIDS dataset?
What are the recommendations for adding/deleting or changing sessions of images of subjects (new sessions for the existing subjects) for the existing BIDS dataset?
Great thanks!
Cheers,
Vincent (Qing Wang)
I helped to curate the ABCD-BIDS Community Collection 3165 on NDA and that is the direction they are headed now. That said, there are some simple changes you can make in your data as-is to answer the questions you posed (I think):
To add: Just add the subject/sessions and keep tabs of everything available within a participants.tsv file (with a paired sidecar participants.json data dictionary of course). To change or delete/remove: Change away, but add something in your modality-agnostic CHANGES file to indicate why you made that change or perhaps notate a change in your participants.tsv file explaining why.
As new sessions come in, just like in #1 above here, add them in and update your CHANGES file and consider adding something to your README about available sessions across some/most/all subjects.
Altogether, I would say when curating BIDS data to just think about the end-user receiving or downloading your data. They are your “customer” and the person you want to know what you’ve curated.