Version 11-30-2016-1 FAR Part 11—Describing Agency Needs

STATEMENT OF WORK (SERVICES)

(SOW)

GENERAL INFORMATION

Title of Project:

Support for XNAT instance for FMRIF.

Statement of Need and Purpose:

The Functional MRI Facility (FMRIF) in the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is seeking support for its data and workflow management platform, XNAT, which currently aggregates data from multiple MRI scanners in the NMR Center (where FMRIF’s and other IC’s scanners are located), provides access to these data to the users of these scanners, and also serves as platforms for managing, sharing, and processing these data.

Background Information and Objective:

Since its inception, FMRIF has operated a series of web-based platforms that serve to both aggregate image data from the MRI scanners owned and operated by the FMRIF, and to share these data out to its users, so they could securely retrieve their data using a web browser, or other web-based tools. The first such service used by FMRIF was a commercial PACS system from Intelerad. However, as both the number of scans conducted on FMRIF scanners rose, along with the volume of Functional MRI data generated, FMRIF encountered significant performance issues that could not be resolved by the vendor of that system.

FMRIF then investigated multiple options to replace the Intelerad system, exploring both commercial and open source software (including, but not limited to, dcm4chee, XNAT, COINS, and NiDB). In all cases, there were either significant deficiencies, and / or lack of flexibility, that precluded use of any of these packages by FMRIF. Ultimately, a custom database and web application was created in-house, by a FMRIF-employed programmer, and that platform served FMRIF for almost a decade. However, in 2020, because of a loss of staff and expertise with FMRIF’s in-house data management systems, FMRIF sought a commercial option, with support, to replace its in-house data management solution. That contract (75N95020P00651) was awarded to Radiologics to help FMRIF deploy, migrate data to, and support a single instance of XNAT. This was successfully rolled out to FMRIF’s and other Facilities’ users, and now FMRIF seeks an agreement to continue supporting its XNAT instance for its data warehousing, management, and processing needs.

Period of Performance:

Support for 1 year is required, starting on ASAP in FY26, with 4 additional option years of support also being requested.

SCOPE OF WORK

General Requirements:

Independently and not as an agent of the Government, the Contractor shall furnish all the necessary services, qualified personnel, material, equipment, and facilities, not otherwise provided by the Government as needed to perform the Statement of Work below:

Specific Requirements:

Support of FMRIF’s XNAT platform includes:

• Updating XNAT software on supported instances to provide new capabilities, and address any emergent performance and security issues.

• Updating integration with institutional authentication system (LDAP and Active Directory) to facilitate user authentication and system access.

• Maintaining and updating interfaces with multiple MR scanner vendors to allow automatic capture and aggregation both raw (k-space) and DICOM data generated by these vendors’ platforms.

• Supporting transport of acquired and computed DICOM data between (i.e. send to and receive from) the platform and commercial PACS systems, and MR scanners

• Continue to provide training and training materials for FMRIF staff and users to administer and use the system.

• Continue to develop and provide tools for version tracking and maintaining provenance of data and analysis pipelines.

• Support scaling of compute and storage needs as the number of scanners, aggregated studies, and data processing compute loads increase.

• Develop and support interfaces for visualizing and analyzing data, including, but not limited to, derivation of basic quality assurance metrics.

• Continue supporting tools and / or interfaces for metadata search and management.

• Supporting and developing tools to leverage OCI-compliant containers for data processing, including, but not limited to, containers providing tools such as AFNI, FreeSurfer, and FSL.

• Support interfacing with large-scale batch processing system such as slurm and PBS on local HPC and commercial cloud compute resources.

• Support exporting image and study data into BIDS (Brain Imaging Data Structure) compliant data sets.

• Support providing automated and customizable data anonymization / de-identification for exported datasets.

• Support open REST-based APIs to all services and data, and support for external language SDKs (e.g. MATLAB, Python, and R).

• Provide mechanisms and interfaces for validation of data uploads into the system, and detection and logging of errors or omissions with such uploads.

• Support command line integration access to API to facilitate scripting, data import and export, job scheduling and status, and building analysis pipelines.

• Provide guaranteed response times to customer queries about issues, acknowledging of receipt of report of issues within 24 hours, with a 4 week window to resolving any issues raised.

• Develop and provide options to consolidate data storted by XNAT on disk into fewer objects, allowing backup of XNAT to tape, and providing a more streamlined path for XNAT sites to migrate their instnaces to cloud services.

• Keeping software deployed at, developed for, NIH open source, and available to the wider research community.

• Provide at least 3 references who can attest to ability and experience supporting XNAT instances.

LEVEL OF EFFORT:

The contractor is expected to employ staff familiar with DICOM communication protocols, understand various computer network communication protocols and security standards, and also familiar with medical imaging data processing requirements. Staff should be intimately familiar with the XNAT application, its operation, and should have extensive experience developing software and features that work both within, and interact with, the XNAT application.

GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBILITIES:

The government will supply all information necessary for contractor to complete their efforts. The government will also provide either physical or virtual computer systems on which the software platform will be deployed. Under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the contractor and government, the government will also provide remote access to vendor to system(s) on which the platform is deployed, to facilitate trouble-shooting, and performance and feature enhancements.

DELIVERY OR DELIVERABLES:

The contractor must deploy the scientific imaging data management system to a FMRIF-operated physical or virtual computers, and demonstrate how its operations meets and conforms to the above-listed “Specific Requirements.” The contractor must also help maintain the performance of the system, as well its adherence to all security policies and requirements.

REPORTING REQUIREMENTS:

The contractor should report general performance metrics of the platform (relative compute load, and storage usage). The contractor should also report when systems are accessed, and for what purposes was access made. The contractor should also notify when system patches and updates become available, to enhance performance of the platform, as well as satisfy security and policy requirements.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:

Travel:

No travel costs are anticipated to execute tis contract. Any and all travel costs are expected to be covered by the costs of this contract.

Key Personnel:

The relevant key personnel have been specified under the “Level of Effort” section.

Information System Security Plan:

This statement of work requires the contractor to (1) develop, (2) have the ability to access, and (3) maintain a federal information system. All work on this platform, and access to the machines on it will be under a Memorandum of Understanding between the contract and NIH’s Center for Information Technology.

Contractor will maintain systems to provide best performance, and also maintain compliance with current NIH policies and requirements.

Data Rights:

Any data generated by this procurement or system will belong to the Government. The Government will retain all rights over any generated data.

Section 508—Electronic and Information Technology Standards:

The contractor shall comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. § 794d), as amended by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (P.L. 105-220), August 7, 1998. This system will not be accessible to the general public – it will only be accessible NIH employees with the relevant training.

Publications and Publicity:

This SOW is not expected to generate any publications.

Confidentiality of Information:

This SOW is not expected to utilize or generate any confidential information.

ATTACHMENTS

1. Independent Government’s Cost Estimate

2. Evaluation / Selection Criteria