Package: hcpre
InstallationQuick NoteFor brevity’s sake, all instructions assume that you are using a BASH
shell. If you have made an informed decision to do otherwise, I assume
you know enough to translate everything into your own environment. If
you have been forced to do otherwise by some powers that be, poor soul,
ask your systems administrator (or local friendly nerd) for help, or
take this as a learning opportunity.These instructions also assume that your python environment is already
set up. If that’s not the case, you may find it helpful to consult ourcluster setup
instructions.
While the instructions there are specific to the High Performance
Computing cluster at Washington University in St Louis, most of them
will apply to your environment, as well.The HCP PipelineThis code has been tested against HCP Pipeline v3.0RC3 (commit
058c132fc, Tue, Jan 14 2014). You’ll have to make sure that the this or
a later compatible version of the HCP code is installed on all of the
machines on which you want to run the workflow. Installation is fairly
easy - as long as you already have all of the HCP Pipeline’s
dependencies installed. Check the HCP Pipeline readme.txt for more
information on how to get that done, paying special attention to FSL and
FreeSurfer versions, and installing all of the dependencies of
gradient_unwarp.py. If you have multiple versions of
gradient_unwarp.py on your machine - be careful! Make sure that the
version you call from the command line is the first version found on
your python path, otherwise you might see some crashes.One final note: because the HCP Pipelines include some pretty large
files, your systems admin would probably appriciate it if there weren’t
a new installation for every user. Check around with anyone else who
uses the systems you’re planning to use who might also use the HCP
Pipelines. If they’re already installed, it’ll save you some pain.hcprep (this project)This project was developed for python versions > 2.7 and < 3.0, Nipype >
0.9.2.To get the latest release, install nipype, then hcpre using pip. The
nipype installation is a little obnoxious right now. You can either
check their install documentation, or go ahead and callpip install hcprethen check the errors to see what dependencies
you’re missing. The first time you run it, for example, you may get an
error like:Need nisext package from nibabel installation - please install nibabel firstOkay. So callpip install nibabel, then callpip install hcpreagain. That’ll get you the next error. Perhaps it’ll be one of these:RuntimeError:Cannotimportpackage"networkx"-isitinstalled?# orRuntimeError:Cannotimportpackage"scipy"-isitinstalled?So, once again, callpip install Xwhere X isnetworkx, orscipy, or whatever it tells you is missing. I know this stinks, and
believe me I have tried to make this dependency install cleanly, but had
to throw in the towel (for now). Numpy and scipy can take a while to
build, but hopefully this process won’t take too long, and eventually
this command will work:pipinstallhcpreOnce that works, you should get yourself a beer. I sure did.To install the development version, clone this repository to your
machine, and update your PATH and PYTHONPATH variables, or run setup.py
manuallyexportPATH=$PATH:/path/to/hcpre/hcpreexportPYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/path/to/hcpre# or...cd/path/to/hcprepythonsetup.pyinstallYou can also try using the requirements.txt file to install dependencies
using pip. Again, you may have to pip install some stuff one-by-one.pipinstall-rrequirements.txtIf you’re working on a community machine, talk to your systems
administrator about the contents of requirements.txt, whether or not
these dependencies are already installed, and any modifications that you
may need to make to your environment to make sure that they’re on your
PYTHONPATH.You’ll also need to install mricron, and make sure that its dcm2nii
DICOM conversion application is on your PATH.Environment VariablesThe HCP Pipelines make heavy use of environment variables - most of that
is taken care of by the nipype workflow. But there are still a couple of
variables that it’s important to set correctly:$FREESURFER_HOMEand$FSLDIR. What’s more, it’s important that you call the FSL and
FreeSurfer setup scripts from your .bashrc or .bash_profile file. Check
the HCP Pipeline readme for information regarding which particular
versions of FreeSurfer and FSL their code currently targets.Running the PipelineThe file that contains the nipype workflow, hcpipe.py, can be called as
a command line script. See the section on configuration, then when
you’re ready to run pass the -r argument, along with any others you
choose to use (see below).For help, call:hcpipe.py--helpConfiguring the PipelineWe currently useconfigobjto write and read files. hcpipe.py includes some tools to help you build
and update config files pretty quickly, but since they’re plain text you
can always open them up with a text editor and change them by hand (more
on this below).To build a new config file, call hcpipe.py with the -i or –init
argument. You’ll be walked throught the creation of a new config file.
You’ll want to have already downloaded your data, and you should be sure
that you have run the freesurfer and fsl setup scripts. You’ll also need
to know the path to the HCP Pipeline code. Let’s quickly walk through
the config steps as they are now. I’ll take some time to discuss each of
the questions, and how to figure out the appropriate answers.Configuration WalkthroughWe start by initializing a new config file.hcpipe.py --init
New config file name [hcp.conf]:Decisions decisions - what shall we call the new config file? The square
brackets mean that whatever they contain is the default value. So if we
just press return, we’ll choose the name “hcp.conf”. Sounds good to me,
so let’s just press return. If the file already exists, the script will
exit.The subjects directory should contain all raw data for all subjects.
Subjects Directory [./]: /data/nil-external/ccp/MOOD_RISK/DICOMsThe subjects directory is the lowest directory below which we can find
all of your experiment’s dicoms. So, if you had dicoms sorted into
/some/dir/sub_a, /some/dir/sub_b, etc., then the subjects directory
would be /some/dir. Here, I’ve chosen something appropriate for my
current experiment.The DICOM template should be a format string for a glob which, when combined
with an individual subject ID, will get us all of the subject's DICOM files.
DICOM template [data/raw_dicom/%s/*.dcm]: DR%s/SCANS/*/DICOM/*.dcmThis is perhaps the trickiest one to answer, so I’m going to walk you
through it step by step. The goal here is to tell the workflow how to
find all of the dicoms for a given subject. We do that by giving it what
is called a format string (google FMI), which allows us to substitute in
each subject number in place of what is called a string format
specifier, in this case ‘%s’. If that all seems like jargon, just follow
along and hopefully things will start to make sense.The first step towards finding my format string is understanding how my
data is organized. Let’s take a look. We know my subject folder is
/data/nil- external/ccp/MOOD_RISK/DICOMs, so let’s make a quick
exploration of that directory’s organization:$> ls /data/nil-external/ccp/MOOD_RISK/DICOMs
DR060  DR061  DR064
$> ls /data/nil-external/ccp/MOOD_RISK/DICOMs/DR060/
SCANS
$> ls /data/nil-external/ccp/MOOD_RISK/DICOMs/DR060/SCANS/
1  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  2  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27
28  29  3  30  31  32  33  34  35  36  37  38  39  4  40  5  6  7  8  9
$> ls /data/nil-external/ccp/MOOD_RISK/DICOMs/DR060/SCANS/1/
DICOM/     SNAPSHOTS/
$> ls /data/nil-external/ccp/MOOD_RISK/DICOMs/DR060/SCANS/1/DICOM/
DR060.MR.Barch_MoodRisk.1.1.20131205.173445.s02tx.dcm    DR060.MR.Barch_MoodRisk.1.3.20131205.173445.19qm3q2.dcm
DR060.MR.Barch_MoodRisk.1.2.20131205.173445.10iky0u.dcm  scan_1_catalog.xmlI might do the same looking into other subjects to verify that the
organization is consistent. If that’s not the case, you’ll need to do
some cleanup to make it so, then come back to this point. Assuming that
we’re satisfied on this point for now, we can see that a valid path to a
specific dicom might be:/data/nil-external/ccp/MOOD_RISK/DICOMs/DR060/SCANS/1/DICOM/DR060.MR.Barch_MoodRisk.1.1.20131205.173445.s02tx.dcmSo how to we get from here to a list ofallof the experiments dicoms?
First, we make use of the wildcard,*. Because we use this string as
what is known as a ‘glob,’ the character * will be expanded to match
any number of characters, with a few exceptions (like ‘/’). So using
this, we can begin to shrink our string:/data/nil-external/ccp/MOOD_RISK/DICOMs/DR060/SCANS/*/DICOM/*.dcmSo here we’ve used two globs, one to replace the specific file name (we
want everything that ends in .dcm), and another to replace the scan
number. So now what about the subject number? This case is a little
special. Since we want the script to be able to substitute in specific
subject numbers, we use a string format specifier here instead of a
wildcard. In the case of this data, the pattern seems to be.../DICOMs/DR<SUBJECT_NUMBER>/SCANS..., so let’s put a string format
specifier in place of the subject number:/data/nil-external/ccp/MOOD_RISK/DICOMs/DR%s/SCANS/*/DICOM/*.dcmNote that you must use%shere - not%d, even if all your
subject numbers are, in fact, numbers.One last change. We don’t need to include the subject directory
prepended to the DICOM template (in fact, it is important that we do
not). So let’s get that out of there, leaving us with:DR%s/SCANS/*/DICOM/*.dcmWhich is what we hand to the script! Moving right along:Subjects should be a comma separated list of subject ids.
Subject list ['']: 060, 061, 064Feel free to provide nothing here. If you want to store a particular
list of users to whom this config script should be applied, you can
supply them here or later by hand. You can also specify them on the
command line when you call hcpipe.py using the -s parameter.After pressing enter, the script will look through all of the DICOM
files that it can find. If you need to speed this up, I’ll leave it as
an exercise for the reader to figure out how to make it so the script
only finds one or two subjects worth of data.Checking series names (this may take some time) (41 chunks remaining)...After it gets to 0, we can start in on the fun stuff. The script will
print a numbered list of all the Series Descriptions it was able to
find. Our job now is to tell it how to use that information to feed our
data through the HCP Pipeline. Let’s take a look at what it found in my
case:Found 25 unique series descriptions.
-------
Series:
-------
0:  AAHScout
1:  AAHScout_MPR_cor
2:  AAHScout_MPR_sag
3:  AAHScout_MPR_tra
4:  BIAS_32CH
5:  BIAS_BC
6:  BOLD_FACE1
7:  BOLD_FACE1_SBRef
8:  BOLD_FACE2
9:  BOLD_FACE2_SBRef
10: BOLD_REWARD1
11: BOLD_REWARD1_SBRef
12: BOLD_REWARD2
13: BOLD_REWARD2_SBRef
14: BOLD_REWARD3
15: BOLD_REWARD3_SBRef
16: BOLD_TEST
17: BOLD_TEST_SBRef
18: FieldMap
19: Localizer
20: Localizer_aligned
21: SpinEchoFieldMap_AP
22: SpinEchoFieldMap_PA
23: T1w_MPR_08mm
24: T2w_SPC_08mmAlright - the first couple of questions are pretty easy. Your SBRef
images might be called Scout or something else instead:Which series do you use for 'bold'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24: 6,8,10,12,14

Which series do you use for 'bold_sbref'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24: 7,9,11,13,15For the next two, you’ll often provide the same answer twice:Which series do you use for 'fieldmap_magnitude'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24: 18

Which series do you use for 'fieldmap_phase'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24: 18If you collected Spin Echo Fieldmaps, they’re probably either PA/AP, or
RL/LR. Just leave blank responses for those you didn’t collect:Which series do you use for 'fieldmap_ap'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24: 21

Which series do you use for 'fieldmap_lr'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24:

Which series do you use for 'fieldmap_pa'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24: 22

Which series do you use for 'fieldmap_rl'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24:T1/T2 are pretty easy:Which series do you use for 't1'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24: 23

Which series do you use for 't2'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24: 24The next one,polarity_swapped, requires some explanation. In some
experiments, you might acquire both RL and LR (or AP and PA) BOLD
images. We’re always trying to improve the list of values that the
workflow derives at runtime, but for various reasons detecting this
switch is difficult to do reliably. So we need the user’s help. If you
acquire images with opposing polarities, choose one of them, sayLRif you’re RL/LR, orPAif you’re AP/PA, to call “swapped.” We don’t
see that in this experiment, so we’ll leave this blank. But if I did
have two of each bold image, one with suffix_APand one with suffix_PA, I would list here the numbers of all of the “swapped” series,
ie those that ended with_PA.Which series do you use for 'polarity_swapped'?
[None] or comma separated values 0-24:If the FreeSurfer and FSL environment variables are set correctly, the
next two questions should provide correct default options. This works
for me, so I don’t supply an alternate value:Path for FREESURFER_HOME [/usr/local/freesurfer]:

Path for FSLDIR [/usr/share/fsl/5.0]:Cool beans. For the next one, I need to know the location of the HCP
Pipeline code:Path to HCP Pipelines dir [ ]: /scratch_cl1/hcp_pipe/PipelinesPop quiz: do you know the resolution of your structural data?What is your structural image resolution (mm)?
[Skip] or one of (.7, .8, 1): .8Now it asks if I want to use the default template files for my t1
resolution, and the default config files. Yes and yes.Use default template files for resolution 0.8 [y]/n?

Use default config files [y]/n?Getting close! The next step was added to handle cases in which you may
acquire more than one Spin Echo Fieldmap. In these cases you have a
choice between two policies. Either we’ll just choose the first set we
find in each session (AP/PA or RL/LR pair), or we’ll do something a
little subtler. If you want the simple option, just choose ‘first.’ If
you choose ‘most_recent,’ then for each bold we’ll either use the SE
Fieldmap pair most recently acquired prior to that particular BOLD, or
if none were acquired before the BOLD run, then the first one acquired
thereafter. In our case, we want the more complex option:If you have more than one ep fieldmap set, you may either
want to use the first, or always use the most recent.
Which policy would you like to use:

0: first
1: most_recent

Select 0-1: 1This next one is pretty self explanatory:If you collect multiple t1 or t2 images, and averaging them yields warped
results, try blocking structural image averaging.

Block averaging of structural images [y]/n? yThe last thing that the config setup script does is to make a guess at
the unwarp direction.Very weak guess that your primary unwarp direction is y.
Did I mention this is a GUESS?

When finished, please open your config file check the value for ep_unwarp_dir.At this point, unfortunately, we do not have fully automated derivation
of unwarpdir in place. So this really is just a guess. You should look
over the final results carefully, taking care to check for any untoward
distortions (like swirls, or unlikely overall shapes). If you see any of
these things, try opening the config file and changing the unwarp
direcion from x to y, from -x to x, or from y to -y, or any other
combination. You might even try z in a pinch - but I wouldn’t try it
first!That’s it for the config script at this point. To re-run the later part
(optionally skipping the series mapping), call hcpipe.py -u or hcpipe.py
–update.Config by HandIf you choose to edit the config file by hand, please note that we use
configobj in unrepr mode, which means that it expects the values to be
in python format. The means that strings “need to be quoted,” lists
[“must”,”be”,”in”,”brackets”], and other primitives like 2.3 (floats), 2
(integets), True and False (boolean values) can be used just as you
would use them in a python script.Customizing Node ConfigurationIf you want to customize any of the hcp node settings, you can either
write your own script that creates a HCPrepWorkflow instance, and set
them programmatically or you can extend the config file. Just before
running, nifti_wrangler and all of the hcp script wrapper nodes check
to see if any of their values have been set in the config file. To do
this, the workflow first checks to see if the config file contains
sections with names matching any of these nodes, including:
nifti_wrangler, pre_freesurfer, freesurfer, post_freesurfer,
volume_processing, and surface_processing. Then it check to see if any
of the settings in that section have names that match any of the
respective node’s input parameters. If so, I try to set the value. We
can see this at work in the default config script, where we supply
several arguments to nifti_wrangler:[nifti_wrangler]
ep_fieldmap_selection = 'most_recent'
block_struct_averaging = True
ep_unwarp_dir = 'y'For a full list of the inputs of each node, check out
interface_docs.txt in the docs directory. This file is generated by
looking at the current interface specifications, so it should be
accurate.Take note that not all attributes are config-file-settable. Those that
are not include those that are derived at runtime. This list is
undocumented at the moment.Customizing Pipeline Environment VariablesEach of the HCP Pipeline interfaces takes a dictionary of environment
variables to be set before calling the HCP script. Take a look at theget_hcp_env_for_configmethod for a list of variables that get set.
To override any of these, or add additional environment variables, add
anenvsection to your config file.You might find this particularly handy if you’re using a version of
caret (provided by the connectome workbench). In this case, you’ll need
to override the default value for CARET7DIR. For example, on a Mac, you
might do like so:[env]
CARET7DIR = '/Applications/workbench/bin_macosx64'Keeping the Analysis By-productsBy default, the pipeline does not keep all of the files generated in the
course of analysis. If you want to keep them all, open your config file
and set the following to false:[output_select]
output_mni_only = TrueValidationSome time in the future, we’ll put in some nice config file validation
stuff. Maybe.Project StatusAlpha release.This software is not a replacement for knowing what you’re doing, and
you should inspect all of the pipeline’s output logs carefully. We make
no promises whatsoever at this point that the output of this pipeline is
worth using.Reporting BugsPlease use the githup isses tab for bug reports and feature requests.