iBrain

iBrain™ and the iBrain™ Analysis Toolbox for SPM are software packages that can work independently or together to perform neuroimage processing, analysis and visualisation. iBrain™ software is free for non-commercial use, and the iBrain™ Analysis Toolbox for SPM is free software released under the GNU General Public License.

iBrainTM

Version: 6.0
Principal developer: David Abbott, PhD

iBrain™ is an easy-to-use neuroimage processing and visualisation package. The software is free for non-commercial use. From its roots in 1995 as an in-house software platform for functional MRI research, iBrain has grown over the years to accommodate various requirements of neuroimaging analysis that could be difficult to achieve in other packages. iBrain is designed primarily to be utilised interactively from a graphical user interface, however some functions are also available via the command line. iBrain can also be utilised to advantage by the iBrain Analysis Toolbox for SPM. iBrain is typically deployed to complement other neuroimaging software packages such as SPM or FSL.

iBrain demonstrations

iBrain has been shown at a variety of conferences including:

June 2006 12th International Conference on Functional Mapping of the Human Brain, Florence, Italy Abstract: Masterton, R. et. al. A software utility for measuring tissue-type partial volumes for MRS data. On CD-ROM in NeuroImage 2006;31(S1);208 T-PM

June 2001 7th International Conference on Functional Mapping of the Human Brain, Brighton, UK. Abstract: Abbott D., Jackson G., iBrain – Software for analysis and visualisation of functional MR images. NeuroImage 2001;13(6):S59

May 2001 5th Australian Functional Brain Mapping Symposium, Melbourne, Australia, May 2001. Abstract: Abbott D., Jackson G., fMRI image processing and analysis using iBrain software. Proc. 5th Australian Functional Brain Mapping Symposium, p22.

iBrain features

The software contains several capabilities including the following selection:

  • Interactive image calculator with many filters including resample, resize, threshold, mask and arithmetic operations
  • Automatic selection of optimum target image for time-series image realignment (selects the image volume that is ‘closest’ to most of the other images)
  • Calculation of sensitivity maps of SPM results (i.e. maps of the minimum signal difference that would have been required for a voxel to reach a given threshold)
  • Sample size calculator (using results of a pilot study)
  • Quantitative 2D and 3D (multi-slice) region of interest (ROI) tools including summary statistics and scriptable ROI analysis of multiple data sets
  • Time-course extraction (e.g. for use in functional connectivity analyses)
  • Flexible result displays including colour overlays with quantitative colour scale
  • Interactive visualisation of raw and processed time-course data via single and multi-voxel plots
  • Quality control including image stack display and quantitative assessment tools
  • Animated “cine” display
  • Automated image conversion, including from DICOM and proprietary GE image file formats to Analyze file format.
  • Reading of NIfTI-1 files (including compressed .nii.gz files) is supported, as is header pass-through NIfTI-1 write support
  • Ability to load voxel data of many ‘unknown’ file formats
  • Ability to call certain functions from command line, allowing integration with other processing streams (e.g. the iBrain Analysis Toolbox for SPM)
  • Real-time analysis is possible when used with real-time image acquisition on the GE Visual Processing workstation

iBrain™ operates on Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux workstations.

The iBrain™ licence is a free-of-charge non-exclusive licence that permits use for non-commercial research or academic purposes.

Please email [email protected] for more information.

iBrain™ Analysis Toolbox for SPM

Version: 3.6
Principal developer: David Abbott, PhD

The iBrain™ Analysis Toolbox for SPM is an automated functional MRI analysis pipeline. The toolbox is compatible with SPM2, SPM5, SPM8 and SPM12. Version 3.0 of the toolbox was presented at the 17th Annual Meeting of the Organisation for Human Brain Mapping, Quebec City, June 2011.

To obtain the iBrain™ Analysis Toolbox for SPM please send an email to [email protected].

In your email, please include the following:

  1. Your name
  2. Institute or university name
  3. Position (If you are a student, please also state your supervisor’s name.)

The iBrain™ Analysis Toolbox for SPM is free software released under the GNU General Public License.

iBrain™ Laterality Toolbox

Version: 1.0
Developers: David Abbott, PhD and Tony Waites, PhD

The iBrain™ Laterality Toolbox is written in Matlab and was used to generate the figures in the fMRI assessment of language lateralization: An objective approach. Abbott DF, Waites AB, Lillywhite LM, Jackson GD. Neuroimage 50(4):1446-1455 (2010).

All of the functions in this toolbox have now been incorporated into the more general iBrain™ Analysis Toolbox for SPM.