[[FreeSurferWiki|top]] | [[FileFormats|previous]]

== The bshort Volume Format ==

The contents below are copied from http://airto.bmap.ucla.edu/BMCweb/HowTo/FileFormats.html

=== 1.0 Overview ===

bshort files contain blocks of signed short integers representing the image data, and have a small, very short, header that specifies the number of pixels in each of (only)three dimensions, usually interpreted as Y, X and time. Multiple slice locations are generally represented by increasing the y dimension to make a vertical stack format. 
      
The bshort file format is lossless in intensity information as compared to the scanner native formats, and is somewhat easier to manage, with the caveats listed below. 

=== 2.0 File names ===

Files are named freely, but must end in '''.bshort''' and must have a matching header file that ends in '''.hdr'''

=== 3.0 Other notes ===

Occasionally (often, in fact) we save files in the bshort format with multiple slice locations arrayed in a tiled format. e.g., sixteen slices are saved in a four by four array. Although this appears nice on the screen, it is a messy format, as the header contains no specification for the number of slice locations, and each multi-slice collection must be treated as a single image.