[MINC-users] [Fwd: OHBM Announcement 3/9/04]
John D. Van Horn
minc-users@bic.mni.mcgill.ca
Thu Mar 11 19:25:03 2004
Dear Yasser and other Minc users,
As someone who has been peripherally involved with the Nifti effort for
a couple of years, the committee has been very impressed with the new
directions of Minc, in particular, Minc 2.0. Though my role has been
limited, I think that the group is taking a very serious look at Minc
2.0. The Nifti file format is an attempt to improve on Analyze,
bringing it into the 21st century, and make it more suitable for fMRI.
This will form the basis of a basic format. Odds are Minc 2.0 may be
recommended as the more fully featured format that gets recommended by
the committee. Time will surely tell.
Respectfully yours,
Jack Van Horn
Dartmouth College
-----Original Message-----
From: minc-users-admin@bic.mni.mcgill.ca
[mailto:minc-users-admin@bic.mni.mcgill.ca] On Behalf Of Yasser
Ad-Dab'bagh
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 5:31 PM
To: MINC-users@bic.mni.mcgill.ca
Subject: [MINC-users] [Fwd: OHBM Announcement 3/9/04]
Should we be concerned?
Yasser
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Organization for Human Brain Mapping <info@humanbrainmapping.org>
To: yasser.ad-dabbagh@MAIL.MCGILL.CA
Subject: OHBM Announcement 3/9/04
Date: 09 Mar 2004 15:43:11 -0700
Dear OHBM Colleagues:
We are writing on behalf of the Data Format Working Group (DFWG), a
committee set up under the Neuroimaging Informatics Technology
Initiative (NIfTI, http://nifti.nimh.nih.gov), which is jointly
sponsored by NIMH and NINDS. We have been charged with arriving "at a
technical solution to the problem of multiple data formats in fMRI." We
have met several times and decided that one of our first priorities is
to describe and attempt to merge the variants of the ANALYZE(TM) 7.5
image header that are being used by the developers of the major fMRI
data analysis packages.
We have defined a compromise data format, dubbed NIfTI-1, that is based
on these variants and is "mostly compatible" with the ANALYZE(TM) 7.5
header, while using many of the "unused and lesser-used" fields for
fMRI-specific purposes. Developers of five of the major fMRI data
analysis packages (FSL, SPM, AFNI, BrainVoyager, and FreeSurfer) have
agreed to use this compromise format in the future, and will support
both input and output of the NIfTI-1 format. A considerable effort was
required to reach agreement with all of these developers. Given the
extremely limited space in the 348 byte header, it is unlikely that any
substantial changes will be possible in the NIfTI-1 format if we are to
retain the support of all five packages.
We envisage NIfTI-1 replacing the current range of ANALYZE 7.5 variants
both for file interchange and data storage. NIfTI-1, while still
limited, contains a considerably richer set of metadata than exists in
the ANALYZE-based formats.
As of this message, the NIfTI-1 format specification, demonstration
programs, and related documents are being released to the general
neuroimaging community on the DFWG website
http://nifti.nimh.nih.gov/dfwg/ along with an interactive forum for
comments and discussion. The DFWG committee will next meet in early May
2004, and any comments you care to make and would like to have
considered at the next committee meeting should be received by April 15,
2004.
Please feel free to pass this message along to any other person you
think might be interested. Comments and questions should be directed to
the NIfTI-1 interactive forum, and not to DFWG committee members via
e-mail. The full list of DFWG committee members can be found at the
DFWG website.
Stephen Strother, PhD
Chair, Data Format Working Group
NIfTI, National Institutes of Health
and
Professor of Radiology
University of Minnesota
mailto:steve@neurovia.umn.edu
Robert W. Cox, PhD
Director, Scientific and Statistical Computing Core
National Institute of Mental Health
National Institutes of Health
Department of Health and Human Service
Mailto: rwcox@nih.gov http://nifti.nimh.nih.gov/dfwg/
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--
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Yasser Ad-Dab'bagh, MD, DPM, FRCPC.
Divisions of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (Montreal Children's
Hospital), and of Neuroscience (Brain-Imaging Center of the Montreal
Neurological Institute), McGill University.
Tel: (514) 412-4400 ext 22359 [MCH], (514) 398-8330 [BIC]
Fax: (514) 412-4337 [MCH]
Pager: (514) 580-4388
E-mail: yaddab@bic.mni.mcgill.ca
yasser.ad-dabbagh@mail.mcgill.ca
yasser@doctoraddabbagh.com
Web: http://www.doctoraddabbagh.com
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