PulseClient

PulseClient is a Python library designed to facilitate the communication between an Pulseq interpreter process running on a MRI scanner and an external Pulseq sequence design server.

It provides functionality to check if a remote Pulseq design server is running, start the server if it isn't, and monitor sequence parameter files for transfer readiness.

Features

• Checks if a remote Pulseq design server process is running.
• Starts the Pulseq design server on a remote machine via SSH if it is not running.
• Monitors the creation of a sequence parameters (e.g., FOV, matrix size, etc) by the Pulseq interpreter and sends it to a designated server.
• Configuration management through a .ini file for easy customization.
• Fallback to default values if no configuration file is found.

Installation

PulseClient can be installed via pip:

pip install pulseclient

As an alternative, you can incorporate this library in your Pulseq interpreter code as:

git submodule add -b plugin https://github.com/INFN-MRI/pulseclient.git bin

Development

If you want to modifiy the PulseClient code base:

git clone https://github.com/INFN-MRI/pulseclient.git
pip install -e ./pulseclient

Configuration

PulseClient uses a configuration file named pulseclient.ini. You can specify the location of this file using the PULSECLIENT_CONFIG environment variable. If not set, the library will search for the configuration file in the default location:

/srv/psd/usr/psd/pulseq/config/pulseclient.ini

The configuration file should contain the following sections:

[settings]
SERVER_IP = 192.168.1.100
SERVER_PORT = 8000
CHECK_INTERVAL = 0.1
REMOTE_SERVER_USER = user
REMOTE_SERVER_HOST = remote-server-address.com
REMOTE_SERVER_COMMAND = external_server.py &
SERVER_PROCESS_NAME = external_server.py
file_path_simulation = /path/to/simulation/params.dat
file_path_hardware = /path/to/production/params.dat

where file_path_simulation and file_path_hardware are the path to the params.dat file created by the Pulseq interpreter either in simulation or actual hardware execution, which can be toggled at runtime by the Pulseq interpreter itself.

Usage

You can run the PulseClient from the command line, providing a simulation flag (0 for hardware, 1 for simulation, default is 1):

start_client [simulate]

or, in plugin mode, as:

start_client.py [simulate]

Replace [simulate] with 1 for simulation or 0 for hardware mode.

Testing

To run the tests, execute the following command in the terminal:

python -m unittest discover -s tests

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the [LICENSE](LICENSE.txt) file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please fork the repository and submit a pull request.