Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) assists in studying the nervous system. MRI scans undergo significant processing before presenting the final images to medical practitioners. These processes are executed with ease due to excellent software pipelines. However, establishing software workstations is non-trivial and requires researchers in life sciences to be comfortable in downloading, installing, and scripting software that is non-user-friendly and may lack basic GUI. As researchers struggle with these skills, there is a dire need to develop software packages that can automatically install software pipelines speeding up building software workstations and laboratories. Previous solutions include NeuroDebian and BIDS App. NeuroDebian covers neuroscience and is less focused, providing only 27 tools for MRI. Whereas, BIDS App is committed to neuroimaging, but is limited because it only accommodates the BIDS format, covering only 34 software related to MRI. This paper presents â\euro˜aXonica,â\euro™ an MRI-based neuroimaging support package that is unbiased towards any formatting standards and provides 130 applications, more than double that of NeuroDebian (27) and BIDS App (36) combined. Using a technology stack that employs GUI as the front-end and shell scripted back-end, aXonica provides (i) 130 tools that span the entire MRI-based neuroimaging analysis pipeline, and allow the user to (ii) select the software of their choice, (iii) automatically resolve individual dependencies and (iv) installs them. Hence, aXonica can serve as an important resource for researchers and teachers working in the field of MRI-based Neuroimaging to (a) develop software workstations, and/or (b) install newer tools in their existing workstations.
