From louis.collins at mcgill.ca Mon May 26 10:19:01 2025 From: louis.collins at mcgill.ca (Louis Collins, Mr) Date: Mon, 26 May 2025 14:19:01 +0000 Subject: [MINC-development] the future of minc Message-ID: <5BD0D32D-E179-48DB-9C72-8E93B75DC453@mcgill.ca> Hi all, I?m sending this email to bic-annouce, minc-users and minc-developers. Forgive me if you get multiple similar copies, each one has different questions addressed to the specific mailing list audience. Along with cutting edge neuro-imaging devices, the MINC software tools are an integral part of the success that have enabled the BIC to achieve world-wide recognition in neuroscience. Unfortunately, a recent DICOM to MINC conversion issue (left-right flipping in MRI) has called into question the future of minc. The minc file format, API, and all image analysis pipelines have been supported mostly on a volunteer basis for at least the past decade. While I?ve never had grants to support minc directly, I?ve used funds from other projects to support Vlad?s salary as he spent half his time to work on minc tools as we needed them in my lab. We?ve also invested a lot of time (and $$) fixing bugs and assisting other groups with their processing needs. Mallar, Jason, Andrew and others have done the same. At this time, my grants are running out, and I can no longer afford to support minc as we?ve done in the past. for a few months last fall, Julien provided some financial help (20% of an FTE), but that aid ended early this year. I learned about this new dcm2mnc issue last week that affects all those that use Seimens MRI data in minc format acquired in the past few months. This issue calls into the question the sufficiency of volunteer MNC support. Some have suggested to drop MINC altogether and to use other tools based on nifti/BIDS. I believe that MINC support requires specific funding. For everyone in the minc-development list, here are some questions for discussion: * is minc dying? do we let it die? is it too late? (I have too much invested to let die). * if we decide to continue support, how can we get $$ ? Feel free to reply all in this mailing list, or directly to me by email. there is a meeting with Julien and a few others this week to discuss the future of minc at the BIC. thanks. -Louis -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: