The BrainSuite Diffusion Pipeline (BDP) and Surface and Volume Registration (SVReg) programs distributed with BrainSuite 13a have received significant updates since the original April release. Besides bug fixes and performance tweaks, SVReg now has the ability to output statistics based on ROIs (BDP will output statistics in its next release). Rigid alignment in BDP has been improved and it performs consistently with images acquired with high b-values.

Due to the number of improvements we recommend everyone update to this latest version. The software is available for download from the software download site.

We are pleased to announce the release of BrainSuite13, which is the first version of BrainSuite that runs natively on both Mac and Windows platforms (a Linux release is also planned). BrainSuite13 includes many new features for processing, analyzing, and visualizing MRI data. In addition to the cortical surface extraction tools upon which BrainSuite was initially developed, we have also added new functionality for performing brain image registration using SVReg (Surface/Volume Registration), which uses the surface extraction results to initialize an automated registration procedure. We are also introducing the BrainSuite Diffusion Pipeline (BDP), which provides new tools for correcting distortion in diffusion MR images and registering them to a structural T1-weighted image, computing various diffusion products including tensors and ODFs. BDP can compute ODFs using the recently developed Funk-Radon and Cosine Transform (FRACT). The results of BDP can be combined with the results of SVReg, enabling the analysis of diffusion and connectivity in the context of neuroanatomical ROIs. The software is available for download from the download page.

Justin Haldar and David Shattuck will be presenting work at the 18th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping to be held June 10-14, 2012 in Beijing (www.humanbrainmapping.org/OHBM2012/). Come see us at these posters:

#408 Haldar JP, Shattuck DW, Damasio H, Leahy RM (2012) Improved Diffusion Tractography with the Funk-Radon and Cosine Transform, 18th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, Beijing, China, June 2012.

#602 Joshi AA, Shattuck DW, Leahy RM (2012) Refinement of Automated Cortical Surface Registration and Labelling using Gradient Curvature Flow, 18th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, Beijing, China, June 2012.

We will also be available to show demos of the latest BrainSuite tools for our upcoming software release.