Brainvox: an interactive, multimodal visualization and analysis system for neuroanatomical imaging

A study of cognition emerging from a neurobiological perspective, as opposed to one emerging from a purely computational or psychological perspective, begins with observations of the human brain in normal and pathological states and is furthered by the investigation of hypotheses which are articulated using neuroanatomical nomenclature. Brainvox is an interactive three-dimensional brain imaging software package designed to permit such research through the support of the description and quantification of brain pathology in magnetic resonance images and of the experimental investigation of human cognition in lesion and functional imaging studies. Important general features of Brainvox, for these purposes, are: (1) adaptation of volume rendering for brain lesions and for corendered datasets; (2) shared memory architecture, which enables the user to identify and label anatomical structures, while inspecting the brain in multiple views simultaneously; (3) modular program design, including interlocking command-line utilities, which make Brainvox extensible and empower users without programming expertise to implement new analysis techniques through Unix shell scripting; and (4) full integration of three-dimensional tools for visualization with tools for analysis. Specific features include a new object templating technique (MAP-3) for studies of groups of brain-lesioned subjects, a complete and extensible suite of command-line processing utilities, a three-dimensional optimal graph-searching tool, and a method for planning PET slices and matching MR and PET slices (MP_FIT).