OpenMRI — Open MRI Design, Simulation, Fabrication and Testing Format

OpenMRI is a human‑readable, interoperable file and folder standard for open-source MRI scanner design, fabrication and testing, with a focus on low-field systems. Think of it as doing for MR scanner design what Pulseq did for sequence design.

Goals

• Portable designs across labs and vendors.
• Reproducible fabrication and assembly.
• Clear coordinate systems & units.
• Extensible to different magnet and coil geometries (Halbach, C-, H-type, cylindrical, planar).
• Validation & versioning baked in.

Core concepts

• A repository (or zip) is an OpenMRI package.
• The package has a top-level manifest: scanner.yaml.
• All CAD/fieldmaps/BOM/test data live in subfolders and are referenced by relative paths with checksums.
• JSON Schema + Pydantic validate the manifest.
• Everything uses SI units, right-handed RAS scanner coordinates by default (configurable via transforms).

Quick start (CLI)

python3 -m venv openmrd
source openmrd/bin/activate
pip install -e .
openmrd init my_scanner --template halbach_lowfield
openmrd validate my_scanner/scanner.yaml

Status

This is a v0.1 proposal meant to bootstrap community discussion. PRs welcome!