[MINC-users] minc2 API - miget_space_name yields unexpected results

[Andrew Janke]

Hi Jim,

>   A quick question for the minc2 users out there.  I'm calling
> miget_space_name in order to get the space type (tal, native, etc),
> but am always getting "native____" returned (even for Tal volumes).
> The doc states that MI_NATIVE is returned if type is not found, so it
> would seem as if the space type is not being found.

Correct.

> Ok. So where is it looking for the space type attribute?

Attached to each dimension.

>  So, only the volume is passed.  Question is, where is it looking for
> the space type? Is it looking at each dimension and grabbing the first
> one where it finds the space type?

In general the spacetype will be set the same for all the (image)
dimensions. In any case as per:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MINC/Reference/MINC1-programmers-reference

You will note that the spacetype really only defines if the MINC
file's co-ordinate system is WRT a scanner (MI_NATIVE) or some other
space (MI_TALAIRACH for example). In short while the convention may
have been a good thing to think about when MINC was implemented it is
not used much (at all). minctracc at one stage set this variable IIRC.

The only program that I know that uses this value is mnc2nii in an
attempt to set the S-form and Q-Form matrices in some sensical form.

So my advice is to just ignore it unless of course you have a (real
good!) reason as very few other MINC programs will take notice of this
variable.


--
Andrew Janke
(a.janke at gmail.com || http://a.janke.googlepages.com/)
Canberra->Australia    +61 (402) 700 883