Overview

In this section, we will demonstrate how to use the fsurf utility to analyze brain scans.

Important note on data privacy: In order to protect the privacy of your participants’ scans, we request that you submit only defaced and fully deidentified scans for processing by fsurf. Images can be anonymized and deidentified before they are uploaded to OSG servers as described in the article on anonymizing images.

Get a Sample MRI file

Type the following to get a sample MRI file,

 $ curl -L -o MRN_3_defaced.mgz 'http://stash.osgconnect.net/+fsurf/MRN_3_defaced.mgz'

MRN_3_defaced.mgz is an MRI file that has already been defaced and anonymized.

Performing a Standard Image Reconstruction

A typical image reconstruction with FreeSurfer requires the execution of autorecon1, autorecon2, and autorecon3 on MRI scan. All three steps are handled by fsurf.

Now we will create a workflow to process MRN_3_defaced.mgz using fsurf. In the file MRN_3_defaced.mgz, the prefix MRN_3 is the name of the subject.

 $ ./fsurf submit --subject='MRN_3' --input='MRN_3_defaced.mgz'

MRN_3_defaced.mgz image is already deidentified and defaced, so say y to the following questions.

 Has the MRI data been deidentified (This is required) [y/n]? y 
 Has the MRI data been defaced (This is recommended) [y/n]? y

After typing y to the above two questions, fsurf creates and submits the workflow

 Creating and submitting workflow
 Workflow 97 created
 Uploading input files
 Uploading MRN_3_defaced.mgz (file 1/1)
 Uploaded MRN_3_defaced.mgz successfully

The ID of your workflow is 97. The ID is needed to check the status, remove and get the output of the workflow.

Combining Multiple Scans of a Subject For a Single Reconstruction

In addition to the standard image reconstruction, FreeSurfer can also run the autorecon1, autorecon2, and autorecon3 steps with multiple MGZ files from the same subject. This allows FreeSurfer to combine the scans to give a higher quality result. This section shows how to run this workflow.

We will create a workflow to process MRN_3 subject using fsurf and multiple input files. We'll assume that the input files for MRN_3 are called MRN_3_defaced1.mgz, and MRN_3_defaced2.mgz. Download them by running:

 $  curl -L -o MRN_3_defaced1.mgz 'http://stash.osgconnect.net/+fsurf/MRN_3_defaced1.mgz'
 $  curl -L -o MRN_3_defaced2.mgz 'http://stash.osgconnect.net/+fsurf/MRN_3_defaced2.mgz'

Then submit to the FSurf service

 $ ./fsurf submit --subject='MRN_3' --input='MRN_3_defaced1.mgz' --input='MRN_3_defaced2.mgz'

The images should already be deidentified and defaced, so say y to the following questions.

 Has the MRI data been deidentified (This is required) [y/n]? y 
 Has the MRI data been defaced (This is recommended) [y/n]? y

After typing y to the above two questions, fsurf creates and submits the workflow

 Creating and submitting workflow
 Workflow 98 created
 Uploading input files
 Uploading MRN_3_defaced1.mgz (file 1/2)
 Uploaded MRN_3_defaced1.mgz successfully
 Uploading MRN_3_defaced2.mgz (file 2/2)
 Uploaded MRN_3_defaced2.mgz successfully

The ID of your workflow is 98. The ID is needed to check the status, remove and get the output of the workflow.

Running recon-all With Custom Options

Generating Subject Directory Files

Running a recon-all workflow with custom options requires a different input then the prior workflows. This workflow requires a zip file with the contents of the subject directory that FreeSurfer uses. This subject directory file can be generated from a MGZ file or from an existing subject directory in FreeSurfer.

Getting a Subject Directory File From a MGZ File

If you are starting with a MRI scan in mgz format, you can run recon-all -s SUBJECT -i SUBJECT_FILE on your computer using a local installation of FreeSurfer. In the example, SUBJECT is the subject name (e.g. MRN_3) and SUBJECT_FILE is the name of the scan file (e.g. MRN_3_defaced.mgz). Once recon-all has completed, do the following:

 $ cd SUBJECTS_DIR
 $ zip -r SUBJECT_FILE.zip SUBJECT_NAME

Here SUBJECTS_DIR should be the location of the FreeSurfer subjects directory, SUBJECT_FILE is the name that you'd like to use for the input file, and SUBJECT_NAME is the subject name.

Getting a Subject Directory File From FreeSurfer

If you have already done some processing of the subject using FreeSurfer, then you can just do the following:

 $ cd SUBJECTS_DIR
 $ zip -r SUBJECT_FILE.zip SUBJECT_NAME

Here SUBJECTS_DIR should be the location of the FreeSurfer subjects directory, SUBJECT_FILE is the name that you'd like to use for the input file, and SUBJECT_NAME is the subject name.

Running the Custom Workflow

Fsurf also allows users to run recon-all with a set of custom options. Users can use this workflow to run unique FreeSurfer workflows.

Type the following to get a sample MRI file,

 $ curl -L -o MRN_3_subject.zip 'http://stash.osgconnect.net/+fsurf/MRN_3_subject.zip'

MRN_3_subject.zip is a zip file containing a FreeSurfer subject directory that has already been defaced and anonymized.

Now we will create a workflow that will run just the motion correction for the MRN_3 subject using fsurf. Unlike the previous workflows, this workflow uses a zip file with the contents of a subject dir instead of a mgz file. To create this workflow, you'll need to run:

 $ ./fsurf submit --subject='MRN_3' --input='MRN_3_subject.zip' --freesurfer-options='-motioncor'

Note, that the options for FreeSurfer are surrounded by quotes and are given using the equal sign. You need to do this so that the Fsurf script does not interpret them as options for the fsurf script.

The images should already be deidentified and defaced, so say y to the following questions.

 Has the MRI data been deidentified (This is required) [y/n]? y 
 Has the MRI data been defaced (This is recommended) [y/n]? y

After typing y to the above two questions, fsurf creates and submits the workflow

 Creating and submitting workflow
 Workflow 99 created
 Uploading input files
 Uploading MRN_3_subject.zip (file 1/1)
 Uploaded MRN_3_subject.zip successfully

The ID of your workflow is 99. The ID is needed to check the status, remove and get the output of the workflow.

Specifying FreeSurfer version for a workflow

When submitting a workflow, you can use the --version option to specify the version of FreeSurfer that you'd like to use to process the workflow. For example,

 $ ./fsurf submit --subject='MRN_3' --input='MRN_3_defaced.mgz' --version 6.0

This creates a workflow processing the MRN_3 scan using FreeSurfer 6.0. Currently the FSurf supports using FreeSurfer 5.1, 5.3, and 6.0. FreeSurfer 5.3 is the default if the version FSurf should use is not specified.

Listing Workflows

To get the status of this workflow, run the following command:

 $ ./fsurf list 
 Current workflows
 Subject    Workflow   Submit time (Central Time)  Cores      Status     Tasks completed
 MRN_3      97         Fri Sep 30 15:53:51 2016    8          COMPLETED  4/4

The screen output shows that there is just one workflow in the list with the subject name MRN_3. The status of the workflow is RUNNING. Two cores are being used for this workflow. The ID of the workflow is 97.

A unique ID is assigned to each submitted workflow. The ID is useful to get the output or remove the workflow from the list.

A workflow can have the following status:

• QUEUED - workflow has been created
• RUNNING - workflow is being run
• FAILED - an error occurred while the workflow was running
• COMPLETED - workflow has successfully completed
• DELETE PENDING - workflow will be deleted soon
• DELETED - workflow has been removed
• ERROR - an error occurred with the workflow

Getting Detailed Information on a Workflow

To get detailed information on a workflow, run the following command:

 $ ./fsurf status --id 97
 Workflow 97 Summary
 Workflow Type: Standard
 Subject: MRN_1
 Status: RUNNING
 Started: Fri Oct 14 10:17:00 2016

If the workflow has completed, you'll get slightly more information:

 $ ./fsurf status --id 99
 Workflow Type: Custom Workflow
 Subject: MRN_3
 Options: -autorecon1
 Status: COMPLETED
 Started: Wed Oct 12 08:09:53 2016
 Ended: Wed Oct 12 08:38:46 2016
 CPU Time used: 47 mins, 3 secs      Active for: 26 mins, 44 secs    
 Completed: 1/1 tasks

Getting Outputs

Depending on the resources available on OSG, a workflow will typically requires 6-12 hours to complete. Once a workflow has completed successfully, the status of the workflow should be COMPLETED as below

 $ ./fsurf list
 Current workflows
 Subject    Workflow   Submit time (Central Time)  Cores      Status     Tasks completed
 MRN_3      97         Fri Sep 30 15:53:51 2016    8          COMPLETED  4/4

Run the command below to get the output of the completed workflow by using its ID:

 $ ./fsurf output --id 97

The output files are compressed as a single file MRN_3_output.tar.bz2 in the current work directory. You can extract all the files in the archive using:

$ tar -jxvf MRN_3_output.tar.bz2

Similarly, you get the FreeSurfer logs of any completed workflow with ID WorkflowID

 $ ./fsurf output --id WorkflowID  --log-only

Removing Workflows

Make sure you have downloaded the output of a workflow before you remove it. Run the following command to remove an existing workflow:

$ ./fsurf remove --id WorkflowID

For example, to remove a running worflow with an ID 97, type

$ ./fsurf remove --id 97
Workflow removed

This will not affect the files you have downloaded already. Please note that the results of a workflow will be removed after a certain period of time. However you will be emailed a warning a few days before results are removed.

What's Next?

See how to process multiple scans with a shell script. If you want to check all the commands and options in fsurf go here

This page was updated on Oct 23, 2019 at 11:00 from examples/FsurfRemote/ProcessScan.md.