BrainVoyager QX v2.8
General Overview
BrainVoyager QX is a powerful neuroimaging software package. It started as a tool for the analysis of anatomical and functional MRI data sets but has evolved over the years into a multi-modal analysis tool for fMRI, DTI, TMS, EEG and MEG data. The software is highly optimized and user friendly running on all major computer platforms including Windows (XP/Vista/7), Linux (i.e. Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora) and Mac OS X (10.6 or higher). It offers for all platforms both a 32 and a 64 bit version to allow handling problems requiring more than 3 GB. In order to obtain maximum speed on each platform, BrainVoyager QX has been completely programmed in C++ with optimized and highly efficient statistical, numerical, and image processing routines. It supports on all platforms fast parallelized basic math routines using the Intel MKL library. The software also exploits modern multi-core, multi-processor hardware for the most demanding computational routines. Multiple parallel processing pipelines of modern graphic cards (GPU's) are used for real-time volume rendering. The surface rendering environment ("surface module") has been implemented using OpenGL. The interactive graphical user interface (GUI) has been built using the award-winning cross-platform Qt C++ toolkit from Nokia (formerly Trolltech). Using cross-platform C++ code for all aspects of the program, BrainVoyager QX provides a native and responsive user interface and powerful computational routines on all supported platforms.
The program provides many basic and advanced features, including:
- Extremely fast and highly optimized 2D and 3D analysis and visualization routines.
- A comprehensive set of efficient pre-processing tools, including motion correction, high-pass filtering and slice scan time correction.
- Volume and cortex-based hypothesis-driven statistical data analysis using the General Linear Model (GLM).
- Random-effects ANCOVA analysis for advanced multi-factorial designs and correlation with external (e.g. behavioral) variables.
- Multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) tools, including support vector machines (SVMs) and recursive feature elimination (RFE).
- Distributed source EEG and MEG cortical imaging and analysis of EEG-fMRI coupling for simultaneous measurements with artifact correction.
- Analysis of Diffusion-Weighted Imaging (DWI) including combined visualization of tracked fiber bundles with structural and functional MRI.
- Dynamic statistical thresholding using the False Discovery Rate (FDR) approach for correction of multiple comparisons.
- Cluster-size thresholding for correction of multiple comparisons for volume and surface maps.
- Retinotopic mapping analysis using population receptive field (pRF) estimation as well as classical phase-encoded analysis.
- Multi-subject Volume-of-Interest (VOI) and surface Patch-of-Interest (POI) analysis.
- Volume and cortex-based data-driven analysis using Independent Component Analysis (ICA) performing single run as well as group analyses.
- Cortical thickness analysis for advanced morphometry.
- Automatic coregistration of functional and diffusion-weighted data with high-resolution 3D anatomical data sets
- Advanced methods for automatic brain segmentation, surface reconstruction, cortex inflation and flattening.
- Cortex-based inter-subject alignment based on gyral / sulcal pattern of individual brains going beyond standard volumetric normalization approaches such as Talairach transformation.
- Creation ("seeding") and visualization of EEG / MEG multiple dipole models in combination with the powerful BESA 5 program.
- Integration of volume and surface rendering with powerful tools for the creation of high-quality figures and movies.
- Advanced visualizations of anatomical and functional data sets with real-time GPU-based volume rendering.
- A real-time neuronavigation module as part of the TMS Neuronavigator system.
- Multi-core and multi-processor support and an open architecture with documented file formats.
- Cross-platform scripting support allowing to analyze the data from many subjects in batch mode.
- Cross-platform C++ plugin support which makes it possible to extent the functionality of BrainVoyager QX.
- The Windows version supports COM-based interfaces, which can be accessed with all major computer languages (e.g. C/C++, VB, Java) as well as from MATLAB.
- The Mac OS X (64-bit) version supports AppleScript scripting allowing to automate BrainVoyager from outside the program and to integrate it in scripted workflows with other programs.
- Optimized executables for all major computer platforms including Windows XP/Vista/7, Linux and Mac OS X.
BrainVoyager QX provides a comprehensive cross-platform solution embodied in a single product. The software allows easy exchange of data between platforms handling transparently potential byte order differences ("big endian" vs "little endian"). Data analyzed on one platform - for example Windows - can be moved to another platform - for example Mac OS X on Intel or PowerPC hardware - and processed further without any problem.
Copyright © 2014 Rainer Goebel. All rights reserved.