What's next
A roadmap to the future developments of Brainstorm.
Current topics
Data acquisition
- Improve the acquisition of the head points and the registration MEG / MRI
Real-time processing and display (based on FieldTrip realtime module)
- Support for optical recordings: Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)
- Support for intra-cranial recordings
Pre-processing
- Correction for head movements (using the continuous head localization coils)
Source modeling
- Computation of equivalent current dipoles
- Display results of CTF SAM beamformer
Functionnal connectivity
Integration of different metrics to study the brain connectivity:
Correlation, coherence, Granger causality, phase locking value- Development of new ways to represent the connectivity between sensors or brain regions
Data management
- Filter the display of the tree by type / name / tag
Large scale analysis
- Parallel processing: Reduce the computation times using the parallel processing toolbox
- Distributed processing: Integrate tools for sending Brainstorm processes on computation clusters
Recordings
- RAW file viewer:
- Pre-load next page of recordings
- If "Use SSP " option is selected, automatically select "Remove baseline" and "CTF compensations"
- Documentation: Add definition of bad segments
- RAW processing:
- Process correctly CTF files saved without the 3rd order grad correction (apply correction before)
- Make it work for all the file formats
Events: advanced process for recombining. Example: http://www.erpinfo.org/erplab/erplab-documentation/manual/Binlister.html
- Imported recordings: Offer the same interface as the RAW viewer:
- Scroll bar
- Events viewer / editor
- Re-epoch (import from files in database)
- SSP
Bad channels that can be specified at the program level (for sites that have permanently bad channels) => AS Dubarry
- Colormaps:
Define manually minimum => 3 options: [0,max], [-max,max], [min,max]
- Create a colormap similar to MNE, where extrema are bright
- Grey out the portion of the colorbars not displayed because of the threshold
- bst_selections:
- Add user defined combinations of sensors (eg. "double banana" for EEG)
- Use this to produce "inversed polarity" displayes too (useful in EEG)
- Import data:
- Save properties "baseline" and "resample" at the level of the protocol (to re-use for all the files)
- NIRS:
- Add new data type
- Display of sensors by pairs oxy/deoxy (red/blue), overlaid
- Intracranial electrodes:
- Display in the MRI viewer
- Different data type
- Display time series
- Forward model
- Images of amplitude: [sensor x time], [trial x time], scout: [trial x time] (similaire to erpimage in eeglab)
Processes
- Connectivity:
- Circle plot for NxN interactions
- Synthetize + plot N sources into n ROIs (requires scout saved in the surfaces)
- Menu to easily recompute teh sources in ROI form
- Time-frequency:
- Stat computed on time-frequency data
- Validate all the operations on the time-freq files (check for mixed Measures)
- Frequency bands: extended syntax (ex: [2 3 4], 10:5:90, ...)
- Scouts values for timefreq on surfaces
- How to combine 3 orientations for unconstrained sources
- Display logs as negative
- 2D Layout in spectrum
- Make much faster and more memory efficient (C functions coded by Matti ?)
- Parallel processing: Use parfor
- Distributed processing:
- Version of Brainstorm that can run without JAVA
- Use the BIC/MEG cluster from the pipeline interface (PSOM, P.Bellec)
- SSP:
Display warning if changing the ChannelFlag while there is a Projector applied
- When processing multiple files: waitbar is not behaving well
- Average:
- Remember how many trials were used per channel
- By subject AND condition
- Save standard deviation
- Display standard deviation as a halo around the time series
- Co-registration of MEG runs:
- SSP: Group projectors coming from different files
- Finish validation of the method
- Apply to continuous recordings for correcting for head movements (using head position coils)
Current Source Density (CSD) => Ghislaine
http://psychophysiology.cpmc.columbia.edu/software/CSDtoolbox/index.html- Other processes:
- Moving average
- Max
- Median
- Significance test (Dimitrios, Leo)
- Spatial smoothing: check / document parameters
Contact sheets & movies: use average of time windows instead of single instants, for each picture.
Database
- Filter display of the database explorer (filename, file type, comment...)
- MEG protocols: More flexible organization of the database; sub-conditions to allow different runs X different conditions.
- GUI: Save configuration of windows (per protocol)
- Add notes in the folders (text files, visible as nodes in the tree)
Source modeling
- Dipole fitting
- Scouts:
- Stocker scouts dans les fichiers de surface
- Downsample scouts with surfaces
- Visualize Beamformer results (contact Zainab Fatima):
- Read CTF SAM .svl
- Create new file type in the database
- Display as layers in the MRI viewer
- Unconstrained sources:
- Compute unconstrained and then project on the normal ?
- Define as default
- Check all the processes
- Difference and stat should be: norm(A) - norm(B)
- Overlapping spheres: improve the estimation of the spheres for the frontal lobes
- Volume grid:
- Scouts 3D
- Test volume sources with all the subsequent processes (timefreq, stat...)
- Optimize: 3D display (better that 9x9 cubes)
- Optimize: vol_dilate (with 26 neighbors)
- Optimize: grid_interp_mri
- Magnetic extrapolation:
- Do the same thing with EEG
- Project sources:
- Adapt smooth factor to the number of vertices
- Number of neighbors to consider = average number of neighbors in the target mesh.
- Compute by small time blocks
- Noise covariance matrix:
- Storage of multiple noise covariance matrices (just like the head models)
- Always save as full, then at inversion time, we can decide between full, heteroskedastic (diagonal) or homoskedastic (i.i.d, scalar)
Problem of having inividual trials + averages in the condition => Display warning or not?
- Save nAvg in noisecov file, to make it easier to scale to other recordings
When deploying to other conditions: Apply destination SSP (NoiseCov = SSP . NoiseCov . SSP' )
Sources on surface: Display peak regions over time (time = color) => A.Gramfort
- Simulation: synthesize pseudo data-files from a cortex patch (duration, amplitude, noise)
Calculate ImagingKernel * Gain for a scout
Anatomy
- Import / registration:
- Improve ICP registration headpoints / scalp (chanfrein, multi-resolution, see with C Grova...)
- Auto-reorientation of MRI after selected NAS / LPA / RPA
- Major bug when importing surfaces for an MRI that was re-oriented manually
- ICBM brain
- MINC MRI reader: EMMA, NIAK (Pierre Bellec), HDF5 directly read in Matlab
- ICBM average surfaces + atlas
- Using CIVET pipeline for extracting surfaces
- Clustering cortex: Dimitrios, David, Yu-Teng
Statistics
- Stat on scouts / clusters / "matrix"
- ANOVA: Use LENA functions
- Output = 1 file per effect, all grouped in a node "ANOVA"
- Display several ANOVA maps (from several files) on one single figure, using a "graphic accumulator", towards which one can send any type of graphic object
- Permutation tests:
- t-test only (wilcoxon? sign-test?): paired, equal var, unequal var
- nb permutations ~ 1000
- maximum statistic over "time" or "time and space"
- Permutations / clustering: cf fieldtrip
Threshold in time: keep only the regions that are significative for contiguous blocks of time, or over a certain number of time points
=> Process that creates a static representation of a temporal window
Input / output
- MRI: MINC format
- EEG File formats:
EEG CeeGraph
NEUROFILE = COHERENCE EEG/video LongTerm Monitoring
- EGI: Finish support for epoched files (formats 3,5,7)
- Other file formats
- MEG160 (Yokogawa/KIT)
FieldTrip structures: In / Out
- Define scouts from SPM / Analyze 3D masks
Distribution & documentation
- Shortcuts:
Add Help buttons and menus (in popups, dialog windows...) => Links to the website.
- List of all the keyboard and mouse shortcuts
- Equivalents for MacOS
- Introduction tutorials:
- Estimate time to complete each tutorial
- Clusters
Anatomy: Segmentation with FreeSurfer
- First steps: Brainstorm preferences
- Headmodel: explain the fields + how to get the constrained leadfield
- Coordinate sytems: How to convert between the different coordinates systems in scripts
- Sources: Modelized data
- Sources: theshold min. size (not documented yet)
- Processes: Describe all the processes
- Processes: How to write your own processes (user folder for processes)
- Import raw recordings: Add "detect bad trials/channels" in the pipeline
- Temporary folder
- How to export sources for analysis in SPM
- Advanced tutorials:
- EEG (How to import an EEG cap)
How to make and compress a movie (Brainstorm + VirtualDub + XVid)
- Ask users to send their channel files, align on Colin, distribute
Geeky programming details
- mri2scs: convert arguments to meters
Zip files created cannot be open with WinZip
- OpenGL options: {none, software, hardware}
- Bug: Scout without overlay, adapt scale for each graph when "Uniformize" option is unchecked (mixing sources + zscores)
- Waitbars:
- Replace old waitbars with java ones
- Add a "Cancel" button on waitbars when the bounds are defined (ie. when bst controls the process)
- Bug: Menu "Use default EEG cap" doesn't work for a multiple selection (setting the same EEG cap for several subjects)
- Bug tree_dependencies: sources files, reprojected on default anatomy; If based on data files that are bad trials, they should be ignored by tree_dependencies, and they are not
- bst_warp and channel_project: Use tess_parametrize_new instead of tess_parametrize
- Bug in_bst_data_multi: If trials have different sizes, output is random (the one of the first file)...
sLORETA: Values are now multiplied by 1e12 at loading for display => has do to be done in another way
- Shared kernels: do the "get bad channels" operation in a different way (reading all the files is too slow)
- Write shepards.m with new algorithm for nearest neighbors
- Use Matlab Coder to compile / optimize some processes
- Optimize calls to bst_get, now study and subject have necessarily the same folder name