TRACULA BIDS App

Description

This BIDS App implements Freesurfer's TRACULA (TRActs Constrained by UnderLying Anatomy) tool for cross-sectional as well as longitudinal (multi session) input data.

This tool is based on Freesurfer v6.0.0

Disclaimer

This BIDS-App was tested with high-angular resolution diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) data without fieldmaps. If you would like to see it working with more complex data, get in touch.

How to report errors

For Tracula-BIDS-Apps related problems, open an issue.

For Tracula-relade errors contact the Freesurfer mailing list.

Acknowledgements

If you use this tool please cite the following sources:

• Franziskus Liem, & Krzysztof J. Gorgolewski. (2017). BIDS-Apps/tracula.

• The BIDS Apps preprint: Krzysztof J. Gorgolewski et al. (2017). BIDS Apps: Improving ease of use, accessibility and reproducibility of neuroimaging data analysis methods. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/079145

• The relevant Freesurfer references.

Data

Tracula requires one DWI volume and a one T1w image per participant (or session if the data is longitudinal).

In a first step, the app will run the FreeSurfer reconstruction (recon-all). If the Freesurfer reconstruction is already available and is provided via the {freesurfer_dir} argument, this step is skipped. In this case recon-all should have been performed with the Freesurfer BIDS App (or at least follow the BIDS naming scheme).

Analysis levels

• participant: Tract reconstruction

  Runs recon-all if not already available. Subsequently, performs the three steps (prep, bedp, path) of Tracula's trac-all, reconstructing major fiber tracts form Freesurfer outputs and DWI raw data. All data is written into {output_dir}.

• group1: Motion statistics

  Collects motion statistics for multiple subjects into one file. Additionally, total motion index (TMI, according to Yendiki et al., 2013). Output is written to {output_dir}/00_group1_motion_stats/group_motion.tsv.

  Note: In deviation to the original equation (which includes rotation, translation, bad slices, dropout score), this implementation of TMI only considers those measures that show enought variance for normalization (i.e., don't produce NaNs - often seen in 'PercentBadSlices' and 'AvgDropoutScore'). The measures that went into the calculation can be found in the TMI_info column of the output file.

• group2: Tract statistics

  Collects tract stats for multiple subjects. Mean stats of a tract (average FA...) are written to {output_dir}/00_group2_tract_stats/overall_stats/. Along-tract stats are written to {output_dir}/00_group2_tract_stats/byvoxel_stats/.

Usage

This App has the following command line arguments:

usage: run.py [-h] --license_key LICENSE_KEY
              [--participant_label PARTICIPANT_LABEL [PARTICIPANT_LABEL ...]]
              [--session_label SESSION_LABEL [SESSION_LABEL ...]]
              [--freesurfer_dir FREESURFER_DIR]
              [--stages {prep,bedp,path,all} [{prep,bedp,path,all} ...]]
              [--n_cpus N_CPUS] [--run-freesurfer-tests-only] [-v]
              bids_dir output_dir {participant,group1,group2}

BIDS App for Tracula processing stream.
https://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/fswiki/Tracula

positional arguments:
  bids_dir              The directory with the input dataset formatted
                        according to the BIDS standard.
  output_dir            The directory where the output files should be stored.
                        If you are running group level analysis this folder
                        should be prepopulated with the results of
                        theparticipant level analysis.
  {participant,group1,group2}
                        Level of the analysis that will be performed.
                        "participant": runs FreeSurfer and reconstructs paths
                        (trac-all -prep, -bedp and -path), "group1": collects
                        motion stats in one file, "group2": collects tract
                        stats in one file.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --license_key LICENSE_KEY
                        FreeSurfer license key - letters and numbers after "*"
                        in the email you received after registration. To
                        register (for free) visit
                        https://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/registration.html
                        (default: None)
  --participant_label PARTICIPANT_LABEL [PARTICIPANT_LABEL ...]
                        The label of the participant that should be analyzed.
                        The label corresponds to sub-<participant_label> from
                        the BIDS spec (so it does not include "sub-"). If this
                        parameter is not provided all subjects should be
                        analyzed. Multiple participants can be specified with
                        a space separated list. (default: None)
  --session_label SESSION_LABEL [SESSION_LABEL ...]
                        The label of the sessions that should be analyzed. The
                        label corresponds to ses-<session_label> from the BIDS
                        spec (so it does not include "ses-"). If this
                        parameter is not provided all sessions should be
                        analyzed. Multiple sessions can be specified with a
                        space separated list. (default: None)
  --freesurfer_dir FREESURFER_DIR
                        The directory with the FreeSurfer data. If not
                        specified, FreeSurfer data is written into output_dir.
                        If FreeSurfer data cannot be found for a subject, this
                        app will run FreeSurfer as well. (default: None)
  --stages {prep,bedp,path,all} [{prep,bedp,path,all} ...]
                        Participant-level trac-all stages to run. Passing"all"
                        will run "prep", "bedp" and "path". (default: ['all'])
  --n_cpus N_CPUS       Number of CPUs/cores available to use. (default: 1)
  --run-freesurfer-tests-only
                        Dev option to enable freesurfer tests on circleci
                        (default: False)
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit

Examples

To run it in participant level mode (for one participant):

Participant level

    docker run -ti --rm \
     -v /data/ds114/sourcedata:/bids_dataset:ro \
     -v /data/ds114/derivates/tracula:/outputs \
     -v /data/ds114/derivates/freesurfer:/freesurfer \
     bids/tracula \
     /bids_dataset /outputs participant --participant_label 01 \
     --license_key "XXXXXXXX" \
     --freesurfer_dir /freesurfer

Note that the path specified in --freesurfer_dir needs to be the mount point inside the docker container (e.g., /freesurfer, specified in the 4th line of the previous command, after the ":"), not the path on your hard drive (e.g., /data/ds114/derivates/freesurfer)

Group level

After doing this for all subjects (potentially in parallel) the group level analysis can be run.

To aggregate motion statistics into one file (group1 stage), run:

    docker run -ti --rm \
     -v /data/ds114/sourcedata:/bids_dataset:ro \
     -v /data/ds114/derivates/tracula:/outputs \
     -v /data/ds114/derivates/freesurfer:/freesurfer \
     bids/tracula \
     /bids_dataset /outputs group1 \
     --license_key "XXXXXXXX" \
     --freesurfer_dir /freesurfer

To aggregate tract statistics into one file (group2 stage), run:

    docker run -ti --rm \
     -v /data/ds114/sourcedata:/bids_dataset:ro \
     -v /data/ds114/derivates/tracula:/outputs \
     -v /data/ds114/derivates/freesurfer:/freesurfer \
     bids/tracula \
     /bids_dataset /outputs group2 \
     --license_key "XXXXXXXX" \
     --freesurfer_dir /freesurfer