Configuration file

The config folder presents a few examples of configuration files for NiftyNet applications.

This page describes commands and configurations supported by NiftyNet.

Overview

In general, a NiftyNet workflow can be fully specified by a NiftyNet application and a configuration file. The command to run the workflow is:

# command to run from git-cloned NiftyNet source code folder
python net_run.py [train|inference] -c <path_to/config.ini> -a <application>

or:

# command to run using pip-installed NiftyNet
net_run [train|inference] -c <path_to/config.ini> -a <application>

net_run is the entry point of NiftyNet, followed by an action argument of either train or inference:

  • train indicates updating the underlying network model using provided data.
  • inference indicates loading existing network model and generating responses according to data provided.

The <application> argument

<application> should be specified in the form of user.path.python.module.MyApplication, NiftyNet will try to import the class named MyApplication implemented in user/path/python/module.py.

A few applications are already included in NiftyNet, and can be passed as an argument of -a. Aliases are also created for these application (full specification can be found here: SUPPORTED_APP): The commands include:

# command
net_run -a niftynet.application.segmentation_application.SegmentationApplication -c ...
# alias:
net_segment -c ...

# command
net_run -a niftynet.application.regression_application.RegressionApplication -c ...
# alias:
net_regress -c ...

# command
net_run -a niftynet.application.autoencoder_application.AutoencoderApplication -c ...
# alias:
net_autoencoder -c ...

# command
net_run -a niftynet.application.gan_application.GANApplication -c ...
# alias:
net_gan -c ...

Overriding the arguments

In the case of quickly adjusting only a few options in the configuration file, creating a separate file is sometimes tedious.

To make it more accessible, net_run command also accepts parameters specification in the form of --<name> <value> or --<name>=<value>. When these are used, value will override the corresponding value of name defined both by system default and configuration file.

The following sections describes content of a configuration file <path_to/config.ini>.

Configuration sections

The configuration file currently adopts the INI file format, and is parsed by configparser. The file consists of multiple sections of name=value elements.

All files should have two sections:

If train action is specified, then a [TRAINING] section is required.

If inference action is specified, then an [INFERENCE] section is required.

Additionally, an application specific section is required for each application (Please find further comments on creating customised parser here):

  • [GAN] for generative adversarial networks
  • [SEGMENTATION] for segmentation networks
  • [REGRESSION] for regression networks
  • [AUTOENCODER] for autoencoder networks

The user parameter parser tries to match the section names listed above. All other section names will be treated as input data source specifications.

The following sections specify parameters (<name> = <value> pairs) available within each section.

Input data source section

  • csv_file :: string :: csv_file=file_list.csv :: ''
  • path_to_search :: string :: path_to_search=my_data/fold_1 :: NiftyNet home folder
  • filename_contain :: String or string array :: filename_contain=foo, bar :: ''
  • filename_not_contain :: string or string array :: filename_not_contain=foo :: ''
  • interp_order :: integer :: interp_order=0 :: 3
  • pixdim :: float array :: pixdim=1.2, 1.2, 1.2 :: ''
  • axcodes :: string array :: axcodes=L, P, S :: ''
  • spatial_window_size :: integer array :: spatial_window_size=64, 64, 64 :: ''

csv_file

A file path to a list of input images. If the file exists, input image name list will be loaded from the file; the filename based input image search will be disabled; path_to_search, filename_contain, and filename_not_contain will be ignored. If this parameter is left blank or the file does not exist, input image search will be enabled, and the matched filenames will be written to this file path.

filename_contain

Keywords used to match filenames. The matched keywords will be removed, and the remaining part is used as subject name (for loading corresponding images across modalities).

filename_not_contain

Keywords used to exclude filenames. The filenames with these keywords will not be used as input.

interp_order

Interpolation order of the input data.

pixdim

If specified, the input volume will be resampled to the voxel sizes before fed into the network.

axcodes

If specified, the input volume will be reoriented to the axes codes before fed into the network.

spatial_window_size

Array of three integers specifies the input window size. Setting it to single slice, e.g., spatial_window_size=64, 64, 1, yields a 2-D slice window.

This section will be used by ImageReader to generate a list of input images objects. For example:

[T1Image]
path_to_search = ./example_volumes/image_folder
filename_contain = T1, subject
filename_not_contain = T1c, T2
spatial_window_size = 128, 128, 1
pixdim = 1.0, 1.0, 1.0
axcodes = A, R, S
interp_order = 3

Specifies a set of images (currently supports NIfTI format via NiBabel library) from ./example_volumes/image_folder, with filenames contain both T1 and subject, but not contain T1c and T2. These images will be read into memory and transformed into "A, R, S" orientation (using NiBabel). The images will also be transformed to have voxel size (1.0, 1.0, 1.0) with an interpolation order of 3.

A CSV file with the matched filenames and extracted subject names will be generated to T1Image.csv in model_dir (by default; the CSV file location can be specified by setting csv_file). To exclude particular images, the csv_file can be edited manually.

This input source can be used alone, as a T1 MRI input to an application. It can also be used along with other modalities, a multi-modality example can be find here.

The following sections describe system parameters that can be specified in the configuration file.

SYSTEM

  • cuda_devices :: integer array :: cuda_devices=0,1,2 :: ''
  • num_threads :: positive integer :: num_threads=1 :: 2
  • num_gpus :: integer :: num_gpus=4 :: 1
  • model_dir :: string :: model_dir=/User/test_dir :: The directory of the config. file
  • dataset_split_file :: string :: dataset_split_file=/User/my_test :: ./dataset_split_file.csv

cuda_devices

Sets the environment variable CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES variable, e.g. 0,2,3 uses devices 0, 2, 3 will be visible; device 1 is masked.

num_threads

Sets number of preprocessing threads for training.

num_gpus

Sets number of training GPUs. The value should be the number of available GPUs at most. This option is ignored if there's no GPU device.

model_dir

Directory to save/load intermediate training models and logs. NiftyNet tries to interpret this parameter as an absolute system path or a path relative to the current command. It's defaulting to the directory of the current configuration file if left blank.

dataset_split_file

File assigning subjects to training/validation/inference subsets. If the string is a relative path, NiftyNet interpret this as relative to model_dir.

NETWORK

name

A network class from niftynet/network or from user specified module string. NiftyNet tries to import this string as a module specification. For example, setting it to niftynet.network.toynet.ToyNet will import the ToyNet class defined in niftynet/network/toynet.py (The relevant module path must be a valid Python path). There are also some shortcuts (SUPPORTED_NETWORK) for NiftyNet's default network modules.

activation_function

Sets the type of activation of the network. Available choices are listed in SUPPORTED_OP in activation layer. Depending on its implementation, the network might ignore this option .

batch_size

Sets number of image windows to be processed at each iteration. When num_gpus is greater than 1, batch_size is used for each computing device. That is, the effective inputs at each iteration become batch_size x num_gpus.

reg_type

Type of trainable parameter regularisation; currently the available choices are "L1" and "L2". The loss will be added to tf.GraphKeys.REGULARIZATION_LOSSES collection. This option will be ignored if decay is 0.0.

decay

Strength of regularisation, to help prevent overfitting.

volume_padding_size

Number of values padded at image volume level. The padding effect is equivalent to numpy.pad with:

numpy.pad(input_volume,
          (volume_padding_size[0],
           volume_padding_size[1],
           volume_padding_size[2], 0, 0),
          mode='minimum')

For 2-D inputs, the third dimension of volume_padding_size should be set to 0, e.g. volume_padding_size=M,N,0. volume_padding_size=M is a shortcut for 3-D inputs, equivalent to volume_padding_size=M,M,M. The same amount of padding will be removed when before writing the output volume.

window_sampling

Type of sampler used to generate image windows from each image volume:

  • uniform: fixed size uniformly distributed,
  • resize: resize image to the window size.

queue_length

Integer specifies window buffer size used when sampling image windows from image volumes. Image window samplers fill the buffer and networks read the buffer. Because the network reads batch_size windows at each iteration, this value is set to at least batch_size * 2.5 to allow for a possible randomised buffer, i.e. max(queue_length, round(batch_size * 2.5)).

Volume-normalisation

Intensity based volume normalisation can be configured using a combination of parameters described below:

(1) Setting normalisation=True enables the histogram-based normalisation. The relevant configuration parameters are:

histogram_ref_file, norm_type, cutoff, normalise_foreground_only, foreground_type, multimod_foreground_type.

These parameters are ignored and histogram-based normalisation is disabled if normalisation=False.

(2) Setting whitening=True enables the volume level normalisation computed by (I - mean(I))/std(I). The relevant configuration parameters are:

normalise_foreground_only, foreground_type, multimod_foreground_type.

These parameters are ignored and whitening is disabled if whitening=False.

More specifically:

normalisation

Boolean indicates if an histogram standardisation should be applied to the data.

whitening

Boolean indicates if the loaded image should be whitened, that is, given input image I, returns (I - mean(I))/std(I).

histogram_ref_file

Name of the file that contains the normalisation parameter if it has been trained before or where to save it.

norm_type

Type of histogram landmarks used in histogram-based normalisation (percentile or quartile).

cutoff

Inferior and superior cutoff in histogram-based normalisation.

normalise_foreground_only

Boolean indicates if a mask should be computed based on foreground_type and multimod_foreground_type. If this parameter is set to True, all normalisation steps will be applied to the generated foreground regions only.

foreground_type

To generate a foreground mask and the normalisation will be applied to foreground only. Available choices:

otsu_plus, otsu_minus, thresh_plus, thresh_minus.
multimod_foreground_type

Strategies applied to combine foreground masks of multiple modalities, can take one of the following:

  • or union of the available masks,
  • and intersection of the available masks,
  • all masks computed from each modality independently.

TRAINING

optimiser

Type of optimiser for computing graph gradients. Current available options are defined here: SUPPORTED_OPTIMIZERS.

sample_per_volume

Set number of samples to take from each image volume.

lr

The learning rate for the optimiser.

loss_type

Type of loss function. Please see the relevant loss function layer for choices available:

The corresponding loss function type names are defined in the ApplicationFactory

starting_iter

The iteration to resume training model. Setting starting_iter=0 starts the network from random initialisations.

save_every_n

Frequency of saving the current training model saving. Setting to a 0 to disable the saving schedule. (A final model will always be saved when quitting the training loop.)

tensorboard_every_n

Frequency of evaluating graph elements and write to tensorboard. Setting to 0 to disable the tensorboard writing schedule.

max_iter

Maximum number of training iterations. The value is total number of iterations counting from 0. This means when training from starting_iter N, the remaining number of iterations to run is N - max_iter.

max_checkpoint

Maximum number of recent checkpoints to keep.

Validation during training

Setting validation_every_n to a positive integer enables validation loops during training. When validation is enabled, images list (defined by input specifications) will be treated as the whole dataset, and partitioned into subsets of training, validation, and inference according to exclude_fraction_for_validation and exclude_fraction_for_inference.

A CSV table randomly mapping each file name to one of the stages {'Training', 'Validation', 'Inference'} will be generated and written to dataset_split_file. This file will be created at the beginning of training (starting_iter=0) and only if the file does not exist.

To exclude particular subjects or adjust the randomly generated partition, the dataset_split_file can be edited manually. Please note duplicated rows are not removed. For example, if the content of dataset_split_file is as follows:

1040,Training
1071,Inference
1071,Inference
1065,Training
1065,Training
1065,Validation

Each row will be treated as an independent subject. This means:

subject 1065 will be used in both Training and Validation stages, and it'll be sampled more frequently than subject 1040 during training; subject 1071 will be used in Inference twice, the output of the second inference will overwrite the first.

Note that at each validation iteration, input will be sampled from the set of validation data, and the network parameters will remain unchanged. The is_training parameter of the network is set to True during validation, as a result layers with different behaviours in training and inference (such as dropout and batch normalisation) uses the training behaviour.

During inference, if a dataset_split_file is available, only image files in the Inference phase will be used, otherwise inference will process all image files defined by input specifications.

validation_every_n

Run validation iterations after every N training iterations. Setting to 0 disables the validation.

validation_max_iter

Number of validation iterations to run. This parameter is ignored if validation_every_n is not a positive integer.

exclude_fraction_for_validation

Fraction of dataset to use for validation. Value should be in [0, 1].

exclude_fraction_for_inference

Fraction of dataset to use for inference. Value should be in [0, 1].

Data augmentation during training

rotation_angle

Float array, indicates a random rotation operation should be applied to the volumes (This can be slow depending on the input volume dimensionality).

scaling_percentage

Float array indicates a random spatial scaling should be applied (This can be slow depending on the input volume dimensionality).

random_flipping_axes

The axes which can be flipped to augment the data. Supply as comma-separated values within single quotes, e.g. '0,1'. Note that these are 0-indexed, so choose some combination of 0, 1.

INFERENCE

Many networks are fully convolutional (without fully connected layers) and the resolution of the output volume can be different from the input image. That is, given input of an NxNxN voxel volume, the network generates a DxDxD-voxel output, where 0 < D < N.

This configuration section is design for such a process of sampling NxNxN windows from image volumes, and aggregating the network-generated DxDxD windows to output volumes.

In terms of sampling by a sliding window, the sampling step size should be D/2 in each spatial dimension. However automatically inferring D as a function of network architecture and N is not implemented at the moment. Therefore, NiftyNet requires a border to describe the spatial window size changes. border should be at least floor((N - D) / 2).

If the network is designed such that N==D is always true, border should be 0 (default value).

Note that the above implementation generalises to NxMxP-voxel windows and BxCxD-voxel window outputs. For a 2-D slice, e.g, Nx1xM, the second dimension of border should be 0.

spatial_window_size

Array of integers indicating the size of input window. By default, the window size at inference time is the same as the input source specification. If this parameter is specified, it overrides the spatial_window_size parameter in input source sections.

border

a tuple of integers specifying a border size used to crop (along both sides of each dimension) the network output image window. E.g., 3, 3, 3 will crop a 64x64x64 window to size 58x58x58.

inference_iter

Integer specifies the trained model to be used for inference. -1 or unspecified indicating to use the latest available trained model in model_dir.

save_seg_dir

Prediction directory name. If it's a relative path, it is set to be relative to model_dir.

output_interp_order

Interpolation order of the network outputs.