Release Schedules


I am currently working on BrainVoyager QX 1.7, which is expected to be available in a few weeks. One of the main new features of BV QX 1.7 will be the possibility to perform cortex thickness analysis - more about this in one of the next blog entries. QX 1.7 will also contain improved ICA features, especially the inclusion of a plugin from Fabrizio Esposito, which allows to run group-level ICA in both volume space (VTC data) and surface space (MTC data).

The main feature of BrainVoyager QX 1.8 will be a set of tools for DTI analysis. At present, QX only visualizes fiber tracts, which must be created with the help of external software.

BrainVoyager QX 1.9 will focus on parallelizing computationally-intensive routines, including the creation of VTCs, GLM calculations and mesh morphing. This effort allows to take advantage of the power of multiprocessor machines such as the Quad G5 on which I am currently writing this blog entry. Parallelized algorithms are now even important for notebooks with the advent of Intel Core Duo laptops.

BrainVoyager QX 2.0 is expected to be available this summer. The largest change will be behind the scenes, namely the transition from the Qt 3 to the Qt 4 library, which I am using for programming BV’s Graphical User Interface. This transition alone will provide many benefits such as a more elegant appearance on all platforms and a more native look and feel on the Mac platform. BV QX 2.0 will contain many new features including the possibility to create and edit figures from computed results (e.g., images, graphs and tables) using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). This feature will allow to create integrative presentations of results from single- and multi-subject analyses, which can be published locally or on the web, and allows to create high-quality, printer-ready output for publications.

In the last weeks, I have worked intensively on Turbo-BrainVoyager 2.0, which offers many exciting new features. I have ported TBV already to Qt 4 during the Christmas break and the new features will be described in one of the next blogs.

I also ported BrainVoyager Brain Tutor to Qt 4, which is currently updated to also support visualization of Brodmann areas and DTI fiber tracts. Since I wanted to learn the Cocoa programming language, I also created last year a Cocoa version of Brain Tutor, which is available as download from our web site.