Frequently asked questions

Below you can find the answers to some questions frequently asked during the development of BIDS extensions proposals.

Can we introduce new entities / metadata to the BIDS specification?

We need to introduce an entity to distinguish on-device preprocessing methods that lead to the raw data, and found entities proc and rec in the current specification. Can we extend one or the other, or should we instead create a new entity with analogous description?

The rule of thumb is: try to reuse as much as possible existing entities or medata. If you feel that those are too restrictive, it may be possible to first extend the definitions of those to better cover your use case. If that is still not possible then you can introduce new entity or metadata.

See bids-specification issue #1177 for an example of the reasoning that led to the application of an entity previously used for functional data to anatomical MRI.