[FieldTrip] Axes mismatch switching from Fieldtrip to Freesurfer

[Schoffelen, J.M. (Jan Mathijs)]

Hi Paolo,

I would check:

1) whether the coordinate system in the aligned MR images is correct. Don’t use freeview, but do this with ft_determine_coordsys, and check whether the x/y/z axes are pointing into the expected direction
2) what information freeview uses to ‘guess’ the a/p etc. directions. If this is anything else than the primary transformation matrix in the file (e.g. if it uses some magic variable such as slice order or so) then this might cause your reported discrepancy.
3) (again) check whether the first step into the freesurfer pipeline script, i.e. the call to mri_convert is yielding the expected results. It is well known that freesurfer is very picky about the FOV and the orientation of the voxel space.

Best wishes,
Jan-Mathijs


> On 4 Mar 2020, at 15:06, Paolo Belardinelli <paolo.belardinelli at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Fieldtrippers,
> 
> still about the source pipeline using both Fieldtrip and Freesurfer:
> - I load my nifti file with ft_readmri, without changing the axes
> - I reslice the voxels
> - I define the fiducials for sensor and acpc space definition.
> - I save in mgz format
> Then, if I visualize the mgz files with freeview the axes directions
> appear wrong  (L-R shown in the P-A window and so on)
> If I visualize the original .nii file, the projections appear correct.
> The mismatch appears nor to depend on the file format (I tried to
> save from FT in both mgz and nifti) neither on LPA and RPA
> definition (I tried to swap the 2 points).
> This has consequences on FS white matter segmentation: FS segments
> correctly the .nii file but it fails when using the mgz file I
> generated with FT.
> Did someone experience the same issue?
> 
> Best,
> 
> Paolo
> 
> 
> -- 
> --
> Paolo Belardinelli, PhD
> Neurology Department
> University Hospital Tuebingen
> Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen
> Hoppe-Seyler Str. 3
> D-72076 Tuebingen
> Tel: +49 7071 / 29 80478
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> https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002202