About VoxBo

From VoxBoWiki

VoxBo is a free software package for the processing, analysis, and display of data from functional neuroimaging (chiefly fMRI) experiments and now voxel-based lesion-behavior mapping. Depending on what you need to do, it may be useful as a completely independent package, you may need to supplement it with external tools, or you may use its tools to supplement other packages that you use.

VoxBo Features

VoxBo's native analysis tools support the modified GLM (for autocorrelated data) as described by Worsley and Friston, as well as the standard GLM for non-autocorrelated data. Beyond that, VoxBo's design is based on a number of considerations we consider essential for scientific software.

A major focus of the VoxBo project is interoperability. This means two things: if you're using VoxBo, you can (and should) make use of parts of other software packages; and if you're using other software packages, you can (and it would make us happy if you did) make use of parts of VoxBo. We don't want you to use VoxBo instead of SPM, FSL, AFNI, or any other tools you find useful. But we would like you to feel you can pick and choose the pieces you like best from each of them, and we hope that you'll find some of VoxBo's many tools helpful for something. If you'd like to browse the list of VoxBo tools to see what might be helpful, visit this page.

VoxBo is free in the sense promoted by the Free Software Foundation — you can use it for any purpose whatsoever and you can modify the code subject to the restrictions of the GPL. It also doesn't depend on any external software, like MATLAB or IDL.

VoxBo design considerations

VoxBo's design is motivated (in principle and often in practice) by some considerations we consider important.

• Interoperability
• Efficiency and Automation
• Modularity
• Multi-level interfaces
• Freeness
• Distributed processing
• Support
• Reporting
• COTS-friendliness
• Portability
• Ease of use and of installation
• Generality/flexibility

History of VoxBo

Sometime in the early 1990s, Geoff Aguirre and Eric Zarahn put together some code to do imaging analysis. Known by various names, including "NewTenureMaker," this software was written in IDL and did what it was supposed to do. Sometime in 1998, Dan Kimberg came by and decided that the software could use some sweeping changes, most notably in its name. After a number of afternoons perusing the Ikea catalog, we settled on the name, VoxBo. The rest is somewhat boring history.