Hi Vladimir
thanks a lot for your elaborated and detailed response...
to quickly summarize and check that I have understood you correctly:
forward.datareg.fid_mri.fid.pnt -
"sensor coordinate" based positions of the fiducials.
'sensor based' meaning here that they are in the same coordinate system
as the D.sensors (or in fieldtrip the 'grad' definition) - but does not
(necessarily) mean that they are "locked" to the actual sensor
positions. those can vary between datasets (esp for MEG)
D.inv{...}.mesh.Affine -
is the transformation matrix between the coordinate system inherent to
the individual MRI (i.e usually the analyze file *.hdr/*.img) and the MNI
the transformation matrix (in the code represented by 'M1') that rotates
the 'sensor-based' (in the case of CTF: head-based) coordinate system
onto the native individual's MRI (as in the analyze file) - is not
directly stored but can be obtained by:
inv(D.inv{val}.mesh.Affine) * D.inv{val}.datareg(ind).toMNI
Thanks a lot again. I guess that should be correct and seems quite clear.
Markus
> Hi Markus,
>
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 5:51 PM, Markus Bauer<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Are the fiducial positions after manual coregistration (using
>> spm_eeg_inv_datareg_ui) stored anywhere in MRI-coordinates?
>> I looked into the code and from what I see there, the manually entered
>> fiducials (by clicking in the interactive window) are stored in the
>> following field:
>>
>> forward.datareg.fid_mri.fid.pnt
>>
>>
>> But that seems to be in (CTF ?) headcoordinates.
>> I also found
>>
>> forward.mesh.fid.fid.pnt
>>
>>
>> which seem to be the standard (MNI based) fiducial positions.
>> I also found
>>
>> forward.datareg.fid_eeg.fid.pnt
>>
>>
>> which could be the fiducials measured by the system, but I neither found the
>> fiducials in MRI coordinates nor the transformation matrix to go from MRI to
>> headcoordinates.
>> Do you know where that is?
>>
>
> I'll try to give a detailed answer this time to explain the logic
> behind the code. SPM needs to take into account 4 coordinate systems
> that might or might not be different.
>
> 1) The coordinate system in which sensor locations were provided.
> That's what you get from D.sensors and D.fiducials.
> 2) MNI coordinates corresponding to the template brain .
> 3) Native coordinates corresponding to the subject's structural. They
> might be the same as MNI coordinates of the structural was
> coregistered to the template, but might also be different.
> 4) The coordinate system in which MRI and sensors are coregistered. In
> the case of EEG these are 'native coordinates' (3) and in the case of
> MEG these are sensor coordinates (1). Usually for MEG these are so
> called head coordinates, but they are defined in different way for
> different MEG systems.
>
> The reason for the difference between EEG and MEG is that for EEG the
> coordinate system where sensor locations are measured is usually not
> very meaningful so it is convenient to express everything in
> MRI-linked coordinates. In MEG, however, it is convenient to use head
> coordinates because then the same coregistration can be used for
> different runs (the location of the head in head coordinates is fixed
> and only the sensor locations change).
>
> Now, the canonical meshes that can be found in the .gii files under
> spm/canonical are in MNI coordinates. There is also a set of standard
> fiducials defined in MNI coordinates on the template brain. When you
> use individual structural, nonlinear transformation is computed from
> the template image to your individual image. The meshes and the
> standard fiducials are then warped to correspond to the individual
> image. These new meshes are stored in gii files in the directory where
> that structural is. The names of these files appear in
> D.inv{...}.mesh. There is also a copy of the unwarped canonical mesh
> stored there (mesh.tess_mni). This is useful for producing output when
> you move your datasets with inversions somewhere where the links to
> individual meshes no longer work. Under D.inv{...}.mesh.fid you can
> find the standard fiducials transformed to the 'native' coordinates.
> If you use the template rather than individual image, these fiducials
> will be in MNI coordinates. Under D.inv{...}.mesh.Affine you can find
> a transformation matrix from native to MNI coordinates. Note that this
> is just approximation to the nonlinear transform that is actually
> applied to the meshes.
>
> Now, when you do coregistration you define some corresponding points
> in the native coordinates to at least 3 fiducials from those available
> in sensor coordinates. These are used to compute the transformation
> matrix between sensor and native coordinates (called M1 in the code of
> spm_eeg_inv_datareg_ui). In the MEG case everything is then stored in
> sensor coordinates, including the MRI fiducials. The function also
> computes transformation matrices between the coregistration
> coordinates (head coordinates) and MNI coordinates, since these are
> the most useful to know in practice. If you look at lines 174-175 in
> the latest version, you'll see:
>
> D.inv{val}.datareg(ind).toMNI = D.inv{val}.mesh.Affine*M1;
> D.inv{val}.datareg(ind).fromMNI = inv(D.inv{val}.datareg(ind).toMNI);
>
>
> Now I can finally answer your question. You have MRI fiducials in head
> coordinates stored under D.inv{...}.datareg.fid_mri . You can use the
> function forwinv_transform_headshape (in the latest in-house SPM it's
> called ft_transform_headshape) to transform these fiducials to another
> coordinate system. All you need to provide is a 4x4 transformation
> matrix. All you need for that is also provided. To go from head to MNI
> coordinates you can use D.inv{...}.datareg.toMNI . To go to native
> coordinates you can use
> inv(D.inv{...}.mesh.Affine)*D.inv{...}.datareg.toMNI. So let's say
> that you have a unimodal MEG dataset with a single inversion and want
> to get MRI fiducials in MNI coordinates. Then you do:
>
> mnifid = ft_transform_headshape(D.inv{1}.datareg.toMNI,
> D.inv{1}.datareg.fid_mri );
>
>
> I hope that was clear. If not, keep asking.
>
> Best,
>
> Vladimir
>
