• The behavior of the ANY/ALL modifier on the image modality search filter was corrected and clarified in the documentation.
• The file naming system used by the NBIA Data Retriever has been revised to provide a more natural ordering of the files within each series. This has been accomplished by first ordering the DICOM files by ordinal position of acquisition number and then by ordinal position of instance number. The files are then assigned numbers with the lowest acquisition being 1 and the lowest instance number within that acquisition being 1, separated by a dash. The numbers are incremented by 1 as the next values are encountered. All values are left-padded with zeros to provide for the ordering within the file system. 
• In your search results, you can now click the study date or the cart arrow to open the series list.

TCIA provides two ways to search for image studies:

• Simple Search
• Text Search

When you first open TCIA Data Portal, the Summary tab displays filters for a simple search and pie charts.

Click one or more boxes next to each search filter to select it. As you select search filters, they move to the top of the list. They also appear in Boolean query format above the pie charts. This query specifies the filters you have applied to your search. Click Clear if you want to remove all of your filters at once and start over. You can save your query as a URL for later use or to put in an email to a colleague. For more information about sharing, go to Sharing a Query.

You can narrow your search by the following filters:

• Collections
• Image Modality
• Anatomical Site
• Species
• Phantoms
• 3rd-Party Analysis Results
• Date Released
• Subject IDs

You can also specify the minimum number of image studies you want to match each search filter. For Collections, if you know the name of the collection, click  to enter it instead of finding and clicking the collection's box.

The Simple Search page shows a summary of image studies that match your search criteria. Your selections appear in the following ways:

• Boxes you selected are checked.
• Pie charts update to show the exact search results.
• Breadcrumb-style labels at the top of the page show the applied search filters (not all may display due to space constraints).
• Count of search results appears.

The pie charts show the count of image studies in your search results by Collection, Image Modality, and Anatomical Site. Click a pie slice or hover over it to see the name of the Collection, Image Modality, or Anatomical Site, and number of each, in your search results.

The Search Results tab shows the same results as the pie charts but in tabular form.

Text searches involve entering any text that might appear in any search filter.

Results are displayed in pie charts and a table, just as with the simple search.

To perform a simple search

1. On the TCIA home page, click the Simple Search tab.
   The Simple Search page appears.
   

2. Select filters to narrow down the available image series.

   To Select	Do This
   Collections	Option 1: Click the box next to each collection name you want to select. Hovering over a collection name opens a window with information about the collection in it. Quickly move your mouse to this window, were you can select text and click links. The window stays open until you move your mouse away from it.
   	Option 2: Click the magnifying glass to enter a name.
   Image Modality	Click the box next to one or more image modalities. If you select more than one image modality, clicking ANY returns any study that is associated with any of the modalities you selected. Clicking ALL returns all studies that are associated with all of the modalities you selected. When you select the ANY search modifier here, only the studies that match your search criteria are returned. Be aware that these may be only be a subset of the studies belonging to a single subject (patient). The potential difference between total studies available and the number of studies returned by your search  becomes clearer when you select the Total Studies and Total Series columns to appear in your search results. To do so, click at the top of the Search Results tab. Select Total Studies and Total Series in the Pick Columns list.
   Anatomical Site	Click the box next to each anatomical site you want to select.
   Species	Click the box next to the species you want your search results to represent, either human or Mus musculus (mouse).
   Phantoms	Click the box next to the phantom option you want to select.
   3rd-Party Analysis Results	3rd-party analysis results are derived data (e.g. segmentations) that were contributed by researchers who were not part of the group that originally submitted a collection to TCIA. Click the box next to each third-party analysis results option you want to select. Only DICOM data from third-party analysis results appear when using this search filter. A full listing of all third-party analysis data inclusive of non-DICOM formats can be found in the Analysis Results Directory.
   At least X time point (DICOM studies)	Enter the minimum number of time points that match the criteria of your search. This filter allows you to see subjects that have more than one DICOM study (that is, the patient was seen at multiple time points).
   Date Released	Enter a From and To date to narrow your search results to studies that TCIA first made available during that date range. Alternately, select the Apply "Available" date range box to exclude studies that were unavailable to TCIA during the selected date range. Click the  button to return the dates to the default date range.
   Subject IDs	Enter Subject IDs associated with the image series you want to receive in your search results. Separate each Subject ID with a comma and then click Apply Subject IDs.

3. Select which columns you want to have appear in the detailed search results on the Search Results tab by clicking at the top of the Search Results tab. The Pick Columns panel appears. 

   
   
   

   Search results are shown in two different ways, as a summary and as detailed search results, and which one appears first matches your last choice. The Summary tab shows updated pie charts and the number of image series in the search results.
   
   Click the Search Results tab for more detailed results.

From the Search Results tab, you can view subject details, view all image series associated with the subject, and add image series to your cart for download. You can also view the DICOM header for a selected image series. In the future, you will be able to view the image.

To view subject details

1. Search for studies that match criteria that interest you.
   The Summary tab refreshes to show your search results in pie chart form.
2. Click the Search Results tab.
   The search results that match your criteria appear sorted by Subject ID.
   

   
   You can now add all studies associated with a subject to your cart at the same time or drill down to an individual study and add it to your cart instead.

3. Click a Subject ID link.
   All studies associated with this subject appear. In this example, this subject is only associated with one study, and only one image series is associated with that study.
   

   The red asterisk indicates that the date, which is the date that this series was first available at TCIA, has been offset to protect private health information.

4. Click the date or the arrow to the left of the cart icon to view details about the selected study.
   All of the image series associated with that study appear.
   
   You can now

• • Add an image series to your cart
  • View the series description, modality, manufacturer, number of images, and series ID
  • View thumbnails of the image series
  • View an animation of the image series
  • View DICOM data for this image series

To view thumbnails

1. View the details for a subject.
2. Select a study and view its details.
3. In the row for an image series, click .
   
   Thumbnails of all of the images in the selected image series appear.
   
   
4. Click any image to download it to your computer. 
   Follow your browser's instructions to open or save the file.
   

Full documentation for viewer features is not yet available but you can find installation and configuration procedures on the project's GitHub Readme page.

You can launch an image animation where there are more than two images in the series. 

To view a TCIA collection

1. View the details for a subject.
2. Select a study and view its details.
3. In the row for an image series, click.
   The images in the series open in the Open Health Imaging Foundation (OHIF) Viewer.
   
4. Click to display the images in the series sequentially, like a movie. 

The most convenient method of downloading is by using the NBIA Data Retriever. You must install the NBIA Data Retriever before you begin downloading. You only have to install it once to use it in future downloading sessions.

To download images using the NBIA Data Retriever

1. Search for images of interest.
2. Add those images to your cart.
3. Click the cart icon in the top-right of the page .
   The cart contents appear.
   
4. Click .
   A message appears reminding you to download the NBIA Data Retriever. If you have already downloaded it, click Do not show this message again and click . Otherwise, click  to go to a page with links for downloads for each operating system.
   

5. Open the manifest-xxx.tcia file.
   The  NBIA Data Retriever appears, with the items you added to your cart in the Downloads table. See the note about the file naming system that appears in the manifest file.
   
   The NBIA Data Retriever lists all items you selected in the cart. You can hover your mouse over the Patient ID, Study Instance, and Series Instance columns to reveal the complete corresponding IDs. You can also resize a column by selecting and dragging the column border.
   
   If you do not want to download any of those items, select them in the Downloads table and then click Delete. When you remove an item from the Downloads table, it stays in your cart. 
   

   NBIA Data Retriever File Naming System

   The file naming system used by the NBIA Data Retriever has been revised to provide a more natural ordering of the files within each series. This has been accomplished by first ordering the DICOM files by ordinal position of acquisition number and then by ordinal position of instance number.  The files are then assigned numbers with the lowest acquisition being 1 and the lowest instance number within that acquisition being 1, separated by a dash.  The numbers are incremented by 1 as the next values are encountered.  All values are left-padded with zeros to provide for the ordering within the file system. 

   As an example, a series with 2 acquisition numbers with each acquisition having 42 instance numbers would start with 1-01.dcm for the lowest acquisition number and the lowest instance number in that acquisition.  The last file in that acquisition would be 1-42.dcm.  Then the second acquisition would start with 2-01.dcm, ending with 2-42.dcm, in that acquisition.  For the purposes of ordering, an empty value in either acquisition number or instance number is lower than an file having a value for those number.

6. Click Browse to navigate to the destination where you want the images/annotations to be downloaded.

7. Click Start to begin the download. You can monitor the download in the Progress column. The Status column indicates when the download for each item is complete.

   At any point in the process, you can click the Pause and Resume buttons to temporarily stop and restart the process.

   Note that files downloaded this way are not compressed. The downloaded files are stored in a child folder under the destination folder such as Collection Name > Patient ID > part of Study Date + part of Study ID + part of Study Description + last 5 digits of Study Instance UID > part of Series Number + part of Series Description + last 5 digits of Series Instance UID.

   Network Error?

   If network errors occur during large downloads, the NBIA Data Retriever retries downloading the series in the manifest file the number of times that your administrator has configured. The default is four times.

   After the automatic retries, you have the option of saving an error report, which you can share with the TCIA help desk, or of retrying just the failed series.