v1.0.4 ClinicalASL Tool release

🔖 Release Notes – ClinicalASL v1.0.4 (2025-07-04)

✨ New Features

• No more template DICOMs required: derived ASL images are now generated directly from source DICOM metadata.
• Automatic DICOM export of derived PNGs: PNG outputs are now saved as DICOM files for seamless PACS integration.
• Multithreaded CPU support from Quantified Imaging integrated into qasl pipeline — significantly faster processing on multi-core systems.
• Improved CLI error messaging with clearer prompts and usage help.
• Enhanced logging: subject-wise timing, file-level status, and better tracking for preprocessing and QC steps.
• Support for the new dataset config file format in run_pipeline_vTR.py.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Fixed subject ID parsing bug in dataset_loader.py.
• Resolved Python 3.12 compatibility issue affecting registration routines.
• Corrected non-ASCII path handling in file loaders.

📈 Performance & Code Quality

• Code cleanup: removed unused imports, applied PEP8 compliance.
• Unified default config handling across pipeline entry points.
• Improved internal documentation and inline comments for developers.

🧪 DevOps / CI

• Updated GitHub Actions workflows:
  • Added caching for Python dependencies
  • Reduced test cycle time
• Locked antspyx version in requirements.txt to ensure reproducibility.