Corner Cube Environment v2.0:
Symbolic Visualization of Activated Foci

Corner Cube: Request Download | Help

What it does:

The Corner Cube Environment (CCE) is a visualization package written in IDL which allows symbolic display of functional neuroimaging datasets in an anatomical context.

We want to be able to see the spatial relationship of foci of activation, with just enough anatomical information to keep us oriented.  This means treating foci of activation as clusters of connected voxels, representing each focus with a symbol, and embedding them within three faces of a cube (hence, "the CornerCube Environment").  The size of the cube is determined by the size of a structural MRI volume you designate as a reference volume, and slices or summed slices ("X-ray" views) of the reference volume are displayed on the faces of the cube.

The interface is shown below; two functional volumes have been loaded (click for a full-scale image with readable text).

Features:

Simultaneous display of 2 functional volumes.
Interprets focus coordinates by Talairach location and reports names IF you specifiy the voxel coordinates of the Anterior Commissure AND volume distances are equivalent to Talairach millimetric distances.  
Reads VAPET, ANALYZE or FOREIGN datafiles.  For FOREIGN files, you must define a layout file that CornerCube can treat as a header.  Volumes can be compressed using gzip.
Also accepts functional data that is a simple list of focus location, size and intensity -- handy if you are reading papers and want to visualize where some foci were.
Runs on TrueColor display systems ONLY.
Platform-independent.

Requirements:

IDL5.5a or higher as either a development or runtime license.  The IDL6.0 Virtual Machine (it's free!) may also be used.  Obtain IDL from Research Systems Inc. at  http://www.rsinc.com/
Requires 1.4 MBytes disk space for source code, 1.6 MBytes for a Save set, and 5.3 MBytes for the example volumes.  The gzipped tarfile is 4.2 MBytes.

Release History:

Save sets are available for IDL versions 5.5a, 5.6 and 6.0. 
The IDL6.0 save set has been run using an IDL Virtual Machine on Windows 2000 and Linux.
Source code is provided.

Software Revisions:

The prior release of this software was version 1.2 (December, 2003).   Much has happened to it to make it run using TrueColor, on the Virtual Machine, and without needing C routines.

Notes:

No testing has been performed on Macintoshes for this package, but other applications developed by this group were compatible with  OS 10 systems. 
Filenames with spaces are apt to cause problems, because the primary author became set in her ways long ago!
If your datafiles are MINC, DICOM, or NIFTII, you will need to convert them to ANALYZE -- there is little likelihood that I will ever get around to that for this program.

How to get it:

Use this REQUEST FORM to request the software.

Online Help:

Click here to get detailed instructions on operation.

Reference:

If you use CornerCube in publications, please cite:

• Rehm K, Lakshminarayan K, Frutiger S, Schaper KA, Summers DW, Strother SC, Anderson JR, Rottenberg DA. A symbolic environment for visualizing activated foci in functional neuroimaging datasets. Medical Image Analysis. 2(3):215-226, 1998.
  

Cost: US$0.00