FreeSurfer Course Setup

This purpose of this page is to describe how one would go about setting up laptops (or workstations) for a Freesurfer course.

Hardware

• Laptops/workstations should have hardware which meet or exceed the recommended System Requirements for running freesurfer.

• Laptops/workstations should have internet access. (For following course tutorials and performing last minute updates of the data set)
• In addition to the listed System Requirements, laptops should have 17" screens to facilitate viewing of images on the screen.

Software

• Laptops/workstations should have the Development Version of freesurfer installed either locally, or via a central server.

• Laptops/workstations should have a recent version of FSL installed either locally, or via a central server. (FSL is required for the Diffusion and TRACULA tutorials)

• Optional: If the course is doing the FSFAST tutorial, than laptops should have the Matlab runtime installed (version 8.3, no license required). However, the commands requiring Matlab have been marked and can be skipped because the output data has already been provided. So Matlab is not an absolute requirement.

Tutorial Data

• Laptops/workstations should have access to the "Lightweight" version of freesurfer tutorial data either downloaded locally, or via a central server, or external storage device (thumb drive, external hard drive, etc). Note that it is important for each laptop to have access its own sandboxed version of the data, with read/write access, because course participants will be creating files within their workspace.

Startup Script

• The following lines should be added to a .bashrc file in the users home directory so that freesurfer is automatically sourced (and other environment variables set) whenever a terminal window is opened.

## Set location of tutorial data
export TUTORIAL_DATA=<location_of_tutorial_data>

## Set location of FSL (Required for Diffusion and TRACULA tutorials only)
export FSLDIR=<location_of_fsl_installation>

## Set location of Matlab and other Matlab/FSFAST related variables (Required for FSFAST tutorial only)
export FS_MCRROOT=<location_of_matlab_installation>
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH":"$FS_MCRROOT/runtime/glnxa64"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH":"$FS_MCRROOT/bin/glnxa64"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH":"$FS_MCRROOT/sys/os/glnxa64" 
export FS_SPMREG_USE_BIN=1
export FS_MKCON_USE_BIN=1
export FS_SXA3_USE_BIN=1

## Source freesurfer
export FREESURFER_HOME=<location_of_freesurfer_installation>
source $FREESURFER_HOME/SetUpFreeSurfer.sh

Testing

• Make sure the TUTORIAL_DATA environment variable is set correctly by typing ls $TUTORIAL_DATA in a terminal window. You should see the output below:

$> ls $TUTORIAL_DATA 
buckner_data                    fsfast-functional
diffusion_recons                fsfast-tutorial.subjects
diffusion_tutorial              long-tutorial

• Once you verify freesurfer is sourced correctly and the TUTORIAL_DATA environment variable is set correctly, the best an most reliable way to test your setup is simply to run thru one or more of the tutorials.

• A more automated way to test your setup is to run the test_tutorials.sh script. The script can be run in the following ways (after sourcing freesurfer and properly setting TUTORIAL_DATA):

## Run a quick test  
$> test_tutorials.sh -quick

## If the above command runs to completion without crashing than your probably all set.

## Run the Multi-Modal Integration tutorial
$> test_tutorials.sh -multimodal

## Run the TRACULA tutorial
$> test_tutorials.sh -tracula

## Display help and other options
$> test_tutorials.sh -help