Product Updates [January 2023]

2023 is upon us! Encord is happy to be back in the office after re-charging over the holidays, and charging forward to enhance the annotation and machine learning development experience of our partners. We're starting the year off with several strong improvements to the DICOM tool! We're balancing with universal improvements to the label editor, and setting up foundational changes in our workflows capabilities. Please read and review!

New Year, New DICOM

Never miss the details with our metadata viewer

When making annotations, it’s often important to have context beyond the image data itself, such as confirming the study identifier, or which manufacturer it came from. You can now access the metadata for a given series by clicking the icon next to the view angle selection interface, allowing you to confirm any of necessary details. Conveniently drag the metadata overview to a convenient location so you can monitor while you annotate!

Manage tasks by study

Medical professional often need to view corresponding slices from multiple series in the same study simultaneously. We've already been providing the ability to view slices from different series in one session, and you will soon be able to submit the entire study at once when done with your annotations. This will allow you to treat studies, not just series, as units of annotation work — making it easier to progress through your work in the way that makes sense to you.

Hanging protocols: your data as you like it

Annotating tasks that require a specific arrangement of series and study data can be made much easier via not only custom window arrangements, but pre-populated the view windows with the data you need. Encord is soon rolling out custom hanging protocol presets which can automatically fill with the correct series and slice information based on the type of DICOM data being loaded. Contact us about setting up hanging protocol presets for your data type and modality, and get ready for the next level of productivity.

Annotate in other windows

Now that you've got your view windows arranged just how you want, take full advantage by annotating in those views. The first version of being able to annotate in other views, will allow you to use the 'Start annotating' button to set a main annotation window and annotate in that window going forward. Future iterations are also in the works to allow seamlessly annotating in all views without the switch button. Don’t hesitate to be in touch if you feel this is something you or your team would benefit from.

Workflows and editor love

Tune your benchmarks

Determining the best scoring metric for automated benchmark QA functionality, whether in production or training projects, is often an iterative, empirical process. We’re introducing the ability to update benchmark scoring parameters in ongoing projects to help teams iterate and discover the system that works for them. Use the benchmark function editor in the project’s settings, and then hit ‘Recalculate scores’ in the performance dashboard to test the effects of your changes. As always, contact us if you’re interested in our benchmark QA or annotator training functionality.

Label editor enhancements

Working with deep, complex ontologies can sometimes be a delicate operation to get everything right. In order to make annotating complex objects a more stress-free task you can now clear your selection of radio-button ontology attributes as well. So go on, click around. No worries.

And for those working with special image or video data, we’ve added gamma correction in addition to standard brightness and contrast controls, to make it easier to work with media featuring annotations which may be hard to distinguish from other background components. We would love to hear how these tools amplify your annotation output!

Same Data No Problems

Large data uploads can often be interrupted by unstable network conditions. Now, you can use the new 'skip_duplicate_urls' parameter in the upload specification files to remove the hastle involved in de-duplicating data on interrupted upload tasks! Details in the documentation.

We're winding down this month's update, but just winding up for the year. DICOM and related tools have seen a large bump in power and versatility over the last month — don’t hesitate to be in touch about how you can use these features, or if you’re curious about the upcoming evolution of these powerful tools. We’re looking forward to expanding more universal features such as enhanced workflow management and collaboration tools soon. Stay tuned and stay in touch, 2023 here we come!