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Suggested Steps for Conducting an at-home FreeSurfer Course
Step 1: Download FreeSurfer For your Computer
Follow the instructions on this page to get FreeSurfer on your personal computer.
Comments on Freeview for Mac users:
1) We highly recommend downloading the standalone Dev version of Freeview to replace the Freeview application in the FreeSurfer v6.0 download package due to incompatabilites with newer macOS operating systems
2) If you would like to use Freeview 6.0, follow these instructions to install a necessary patch
Step 2: Download the tutorial data
Download the tutorial data here (~ 8GB).
Step 3: Test your FreeSurfer Install and Tutorial Data
These are some instructions written by Paul Wighton on how to run a script that will test some of the FreeSurfer tutorial commands on your laptop and ensure your install is working well enough to attempt the tutorials for the course.
FreeSurfer 6 can be downloaded from here: https://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pub/dist/freesurfer/6.0.0/freesurfer-Linux-centos6_x86_64-stable-pub-v6.0.0.tar.gz More insallation instructions can be found here: https://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/fswiki/DownloadAndInstall The tutorial data can be downloaded from here: https://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pub/data/tutorial_data.tar.gz On my machine, I stored the downloaded `tar.gz` files in a directory called `/home/paul/lcn/data/fs-course-20200310`. After extracting the archives I have the following subdirectories in `/home/paul/lcn/data/fs-course-20200310` - `freesurfer` - `tutorial_data_20190918_1558` Next, edit the file `bashrc` in the `tutorial_data_20190918_1558` directory. (In my case, the full path of that file is `/home/paul/lcn/data/fs-course-20200310/tutorial_data_20190918_1558/bashrc`) and change lines 16 and 19 to match the location of freesurfer and the tutorial data on your machine. In my case, I edited the lines to read: - Line 16: `export TUTORIAL_DATA=/home/paul/lcn/data/fs-course-20200310/tutorial_data_20190918_1558` - Line 19: `export FREESURFER_HOME=/home/paul/lcn/data/fs-course-20200310/freesurfer` Next, change into the tutorial data directory: ``` cd /home/paul/lcn/data/fs-course-20200310/tutorial_data_20190918_1558 ``` and test the installation by running: ``` source bashrc test_commands.sh.15 ``` This may take a while (30 minutes to an hour) and the script will constantly "steal focus" so you will not be able to use your machine while the tests are running. If at some point, you see: ``` mean.practice.table (END) ``` Hit `q` so the script can continue (I had to do this twice) When you see `colortable with 14176 entries read (originally /autofs/cluster/freesurfer/centos7_x86_64/stable6/FreeSurferColorLUT.txt)` you can hit enter and the script will end.
Step 4: Prepare with the basics
We usually send this page out to students before each course to help them find resources to cover the basics such as: Intro to unix and scripting, intro to neuroanatomy etc.
Step 5: Suggested Schedule (5 days)
Day 1: Intro to FreeSurfer and Working with the Individual Subject
Subject |
Talk |
Slides |
Relevant Tutorials |
Upcoming/Recorded Live Lectures |
Intro to FreeSurfer Jargon |
N/A |
|||
Intro to Linux for FreeSurfer Users |
||||
Intro to FreeSurfer Software |
N/A |
|||
Analyzing the Individual Subject |
||||
Intro to Freeview and the working with data |
N/A |
|||
ROI Analysis |
Bonus Talks: Intro to MRI Presentation,Intro to MR Slides, MRI Aquisition Techniques for Morphometry, MRI Acquisition Methods Slides
Day 2: More Structural Processing and Troubleshooting
Subject |
Talk |
Slides |
Relevant Tutorials |
Upcoming Live Lectures |
Troubleshooting |
||||
Longitudinal Analysis |
|
|||
An Overview of Registration Methods |
N/A |
|
Day 3: Group Analysis and Statistics
Subject |
Talk |
Slides |
Relevant Tutorials |
Upcoming Live Lectures |
Surface-based analysis: Intersubject Registration & Smoothing |
N/A |
|
||
Group Analysis |
||||
Multiple Comparisons |
Day 4: Multimodal Analysis / Diffusion Analysis
Subject |
Talk |
Slides |
Relevant Tutorials |
Intro to Diffusion |
|||
Multi-Modal Integration |
Multi-Modal Integration, Part 1: Registration, Multi-Modal Integration, Part 2: Group Analysis |
Multi-Modal Integration Tutorial, Part 1 ,Multi-Modal Integration Tutorial, Part 2 |
|
Tracts Constrained by Underlying Anatomy (TRACULA) |
Bonus Talks and Slides: Longitudinal TRACULA
Day 5: fMRI Analysis and FSFAST
Subject |
Talk |
Slides |
Relevant Tutorials |
Basics of fMRI |
N/A |
||
Resting State fMRI |
N/A |
||
FSFAST |
Bonus Talks and Slides: Structural & Functional Data Integration
Getting the Help and Support you need
You can email the FreeSurfer Help mailing list with questions related to your own data processing and troubleshooting. The address to email for all questions is: freesurfer@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu. For troubleshooting your data processing, be sure to attach your recon-all.log file to your email. For questions specifically related to any of the above lectures or tutorials, feel free to email the speaker of the lecture, you can find their emails below.
Lecture Topic |
Lecturer |
Email Address |
Intro to FreeSurfer Jargon |
Dev Cordero |
|
Intro to Linux for Freesurfer Users |
Matt Larrabee |
|
Intro to FreeSurfer Software |
Matt Vera |
|
Analyzing the Individual Subject |
Bram Diamond |
|
Intro to FreeView & Working with Data |
Kim Nestor |
|
Troubleshooting |
Leah Morgan |
|
Group Analysis |
Paul Wighton |
Upcoming FreeSurfer courses
If you would like to be notified about upcoming FreeSurfer courses, sign up for the course mailing list.. We host two Boston courses each year, typically in the first week of April and the last week of September.