What's next

A roadmap for the future developments of Brainstorm.

Next six months

Pre-processing

Functionnal connectivity

New interface elements

• MEG protocols: More flexible organization of the database; sub-conditions to allow different runs X different conditions.
• SSP:
  • Make SSP projections dynamic, and keep the full list instead of always them combining them
  • Take the bad channels in account in the application of the SSP
  • Refresh display after changing the list of bad channels (imported files + raw) so the SSP are applied correctly
• bst_selections:
  • Add user defined combinations of sensors (eg. "double banana" for EEG)
  • Use this to produce "inversed polarity" displayes too (useful in EEG)
  • Standard setups for al the EEG caps

• Sources on surface: Display peak regions over time (time = color) => A.Gramfort

• Homogenize a selection of several subjects/conditions
  • Popup menu when more than one study selected
  • Creation of a common channel file (match channels by names, not by order)
  • Register MEG runs (recompute fields for a different set of sensors, MEGCoregister from old brainstorm)
• Images of amplitude: [sensor x time], [trial x time], scout: [trial x time] (similaire to erpimage in eeglab)
• Simulation: synthesize pseudo data-files from a cortex patch (duration, amplitude, noise)

• Interface to compute reaction times based on events:
  Input:selection of cue event + event response; Output: reation time trial by trial, average, std, distribution... => Etienne Labyt

• Database navigator: F4 to switch to next sourcefile
• Segmentation in microstates

Source modeling

• Inverse:
  • Stable LCMV Beamformer
  • MUSIC

  • sLORETA: Values are now multiplied by 1e12 at loading for display => has do to be done in another way

• Unconstrained sources:
  • 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
  • Optimize bst_extrapm.m, add waitbar
  • Use the noise covariance from the database instead of recomputing it
• 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:
  • 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' )

Anatomy

• MRI import: auto-reorientation of MRI after selected NAS / LPA / RPA.
• Major bug when importing surfaces for an MRI that was re-oriented manually
• Finalize Brodmann scouts

• Remove NCS/Talairach coordinate system, or fix it => Sylvain, Karim ND

• Clustering cortex: Dimitrios, David, Yu-Teng

Processes

• Important new processes for a full processing pipleline:
  • Import, and segmentation of RAW files
  • Detect bad segments on RAW (then events in "bad" segments would be ignored)
  • Artifact detection: use other things than simple value thresholds (like variance of the sensors...)

  • Create events list based on thresholds on some channels (Stim, EOG, ECG...) => Etienne Labyt

  • Creation of SSP vectors (ex: Remove cardiac artifac)
  • ICA
  • Integration of Antoine Ducorps methods (everything in the doc of the dataHandler):
    • Cardiac artifact correction in MEG
    • PCA correction of ocular artifacts
    • Interpolation of missing EEG canal
  • Headmodel / sources / noise cov
  • Project sources
  • Delete intermediary files
• Processing raw/continuous:
  • Process non-FIF files (need to convert the header)
  • Apply SSP + CTF Compensators(only if it useful - maybe create a specific process for that)
• Other processes:
  • Bug: gradnorm crashes with bad channels
  • Spatial smoothing: check / document parameters
  • Sinusoid removal: fix new function
• Time-frequency:
  • Write script for timefreq tutorial
  • Make much faster and more memory efficient (C functions coded by Matti ?)
  • Power spectrum: computation (FFT/welch, or average of TF) + display(f/Power, 2DLayout)
  • Display stat computed on time-frequency data
  • Display TF maps separately for the two gradiometers (if not: overlap)
  • Source reconstruction by frequency bands
  • Scouts on surface / time-freq
• Process selection interface:
  • Bug when redimensioning window (with more than one process)
  • isAvgRef: warning quand process necessite des donnees en AVG REF en entree
  • Save "freqband" option when edited from custom processes
• John's noise cancellation filters
• Chain calls of similar processes (ex. bandpass+sin_remove), to avoid reading the full raw files several times

Statistics

• 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

  • http://fieldtrip.fcdonders.nl/tutorial/cluster_permutation_timelock

  • http://fieldtrip.fcdonders.nl/tutorial/cluster_permutation_freq

• 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

Display

• OpenGL options: {none, software, hardware}
• Colormap: Set colormap max with right-click + move on the colorbar

• Bug: Mixing 2 views MRI/3d, white cuts appear after SetCurrentFigure

• 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)

• Contact sheets & movies: use average of time windows instead of single instants, for each picture.

I/O

• EEG File formats:
  • Nihon Kohden
  • EDF+

  • BrainVision / BrainAmp: Get functions from EEGLAB

  • EEG CeeGraph

  • NEUROFILE = COHERENCE EEG/video LongTerm Monitoring => Manfred Spueler

  • EGI: Finish support for epoched files (formats 3,5,7)
• Other file formats
  • MEG160 (KIT)
  • CTF:

    • Read continuous RAW files split in several .meg4 files ( > 2 Go)

    • Read STIM channel and generate MarkerFile

  • EEGLAB: Apply ICA matrices, get number of trials for AVG files

  • FieldTrip structures: In / Out

  • Gzipped Nifti (new BrainVISA standard)

  • Analyze / Nifti:<<BR>>

    • Fix output function (output MRIs cannot be imported in SPM)
    • Use correctly field "orient" to align automatically MRI when importing
• Define scouts from SPM / Analyze 3D masks

• Files > 2Gb: display warnings

Programming details

• Double-click doesn't work well on some Linux workstations
• Bug: Menu "Use default EEG cap" doesn't work for a multiple selection (setting the same EEG cap for several subjects)

• Bug node selection: click on sources > TF: select node-source, not node-condition

• 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

• Testing functions: test_ctf "folder" / test_neuromag "folder" / test "folder" => Alex

• Bug in_bst_data_multi: If trials have different sizes, output is random (the one of the first file)...
• Shared kernels: do the "get bad channels" operation in a different way (reading all the files is too slow)
• Rewrite all GUI functions with gui_component

• Remove field "BrainStormSubject" in the studies file: force same folder name for anat & data

• Allow protocols with same folder for anat and data
• Ensure that all the loaded and saved filenames are in "unix" format
• Use parfor: When not available, replace directly all the "parfor" with "for" in file.m
• Use Matlab GPU toolbox
• Re-use panels instead of delete+create again
• Optimize bst_read_events_track
• Write shepards.m with new algorithm for nearest neighbors
• Use tesselations_stat and tesselations_outwards to clean surfaces
• Movies: Use JAVE (Java)
• Screen captures: Use Yair Altman functions (in Matlab Central)

Distribution & documentation

• Compile stand-alone version: Linux, MacOS
• Version with big fonts for live demos

• Add Help buttons and menus (in popups, dialog windows...) => Links to the website.

• Send email to registered users to anounce major improvements
• Script tutorials:
  • Update them to reflect all the recent changes
  • Script for the time-frequency computation
• 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)
  • Scouts: Atlases of Tzourio-Mazoyer and Brodman
  • Processes: Describe all the processes
  • Processes: How to write your own processes (user folder for processes)
  • Processes: Processing RAW files
  • Import raw recordings: Add "detect bad trials/channels" in the pipeline
• Advanced tutorials:
  • MNE sample dataset
  • EEG (How to import an EEG cap)

  • MRI segmentation with FreeSurfer => David Wheland

  • How to make and compress a movie (Brainstorm + VirtualDub + XVid)

• Display the "What's new" page after downloading new version of brainstorm
• Ask users to send their channel files, align on Colin, distribute

Unsolved problems

• Surfaces:

  • Influence of the software used to extract surfaces (BrainVisa, BrainSuite, FreeSurfer)

  • Type of cortex surface to use: grey/white, grey/csf, midsurface ?
  • How to get good surfaces for BEM ?
• Group analysis:
  • 1) localization on individual brain + interpolation on MNI brain ?
  • 2) localization directly on MNI brain ?
  • Normalize amplitudes across different subjects / runs ?
• Online documentation of forward and inverse methods