Writing your own processes

Brainstorm features a flexible plug-in structure. All the operations available when using the Process1 and Process2 tabs are in fact written as plug-ins. A Brainstorm plug-in, or "process", is a single Matlab .m script that is automatically identified and added to the menus in the pipeline editor. Two folders are parsed for plug-ins:

• brainstorm3/toolbox/process/functions:
  Brainstorm "official" processes, included in the main distribution of the software

• $HOME/.brainstorm/process:
  User processes folder, to develop new processes or overwrite some default function

Process structure

A process function must be named "process_...m" and located in one of the two process folders in order to be recognized by the software. Let's call our example function "process_test.m". It contains at least 4 functions:

• process_test(): The first line of the script must contain a function with the same name as the .m script. It contains only a call to the Brainstorm script macro_methodcall. This allows us to call subfunction in the process_test.m script from outside, using the syntax: process_test('FunctionName', arguments)

• GetDescription(): Returns a structure that describes the process. This function is called when Brainstorm parses the process folders to find all the valid processes

Run Matlab command