Quick Links Documentation Notes Interactive job Batch job Swarm of jobs

Fastsurfer is a neuroimaging pipeline based on deep learning.

• Henschel L, Conjeti S, Estrada S, Diers K, Fischl B, Reuter M. FastSurfer - A fast and accurate deep learning based neuroimaging pipeline, Neuroimage. 2020;219:117012

• Fastsurfer github page

• Module Name: fastsurfer (see the modules page for more information). Note that you have to load the freesurfer and python modules as well. The freesurfer initialization scripts need to be run in addition to loading the module.
• Freesurfer uses temporary files for some calculations. By default, these will go to /scratch (i.e. the top level of the shared scratch directory) which is low-performance (i.e. reading and writing to /scratch is slowing down your jobs). Instead, you should allocate local disk (/lscratch) and set the environment variable $tmpdir=/lscratch/${SLURM_JOBID} to speed up your jobs. See the examples below.

Allocate an interactive session with 5 GB of local disk and run the program. Sample session below::

[user@biowulf]$ sinteractive --mem=35g --cpus-per-task=64 --gres=lscratch:5
salloc.exe: Pending job allocation 46116226
salloc.exe: job 46116226 queued and waiting for resources
salloc.exe: job 46116226 has been allocated resources
salloc.exe: Granted job allocation 46116226
salloc.exe: Waiting for resource configuration
salloc.exe: Nodes cn3144 are ready for job

[user@cn3144 ~]$ module load fastsurfer freesurfer python
[+] Loading fastsurfer  c5e9677  on cn3144 
[+] Loading freesurfer  7.1.1  on cn3144 
[+] Loading python 3.7  ...

[user@cn3144 ~]$ cd /lscratch/${SLURM_JOB_ID}

[user@cn3144 ~]$ source $FREESURFER_HOME/SetUpFreeSurfer.sh
-------- freesurfer-linux-centos7_x86_64-7.1.1-20200723-8b40551 --------
Setting up environment for FreeSurfer/FS-FAST (and FSL)
FREESURFER_HOME   /usr/local/apps/freesurfer/7.1.1
FSFAST_HOME       /usr/local/apps/freesurfer/7.1.1/fsfast
FSF_OUTPUT_FORMAT nii.gz
SUBJECTS_DIR      /usr/local/apps/freesurfer/7.1.1/subjects
MNI_DIR           /usr/local/apps/freesurfer/7.1.1/mni

[user@cn3144 ~]$ export tmpdir=/lscratch/${SLURM_JOBID}

[user@cn3144 ~]$ run_fastsurfer.sh --t1 $SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/mri/orig.mgz \
                  --sid bert \
                  --sd /lscratch/${SLURM_JOB_ID}/analysis \
                  --parallel --threads 64
Thu Aug  6 15:17:30 EDT 2020

/usr/local/apps/fastsurfer/c5e9677/FastSurferCNN /lscratch/46116226
python eval.py --in_name /usr/local/apps/freesurfer/7.1.1/subjects/bert/mri/orig.mgz --out_name /lscratch/46116226/analysis/bert/mri/aparc.DKTatlas+aseg.deep.mgz --order 1 --network_sagittal_path ../checkpoints/Sagittal_Weights_FastSurferCNN/ckpts/Epoch_30_training_state.pkl --network_axial_path ../checkpoints/Axial_Weights_FastSurferCNN/ckpts/Epoch_30_training_state.pkl --network_coronal_path ../checkpoints/Coronal_Weights_FastSurferCNN/ckpts/Epoch_30_training_state.pkl --batch_size 8 --simple_run
Reading volume /usr/local/apps/freesurfer/7.1.1/subjects/bert/mri/orig.mgz
Loading Axial
Successfully loaded Image from /usr/local/apps/freesurfer/7.1.1/subjects/bert/mri/orig.mgz
Loading Sagittal
Successfully loaded Image from /usr/local/apps/freesurfer/7.1.1/subjects/bert/mri/orig.mgz
Loading Coronal.
Successfully loaded Image from /usr/local/apps/freesurfer/7.1.1/subjects/bert/mri/orig.mgz

[...]

[user@cn3144 ~]$ exit
salloc.exe: Relinquishing job allocation 46116226
[user@biowulf ~]$

Create a batch input file (e.g. fastsurfer.sh). For example:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
module load fastsurfer freesurfer python
source $FREESURFER_HOME/SetUpFreeSurfer.sh
# set the environment variable tmpdir to local scratch for better performance
export tmpdir=/lscratch/$SLURM_JOBID

run_fastsurfer.sh --t1 $SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/mri/orig.mgz \
                  --sid bert \
                  --sd /lscratch/${SLURM_JOB_ID}/analysis \
                  --parallel --threads 64

Submit this job using the Slurm sbatch command.

sbatch  [--mem=#] --gres=lscratch:5 fastsurfer.sh

For swarm jobs, it might be simplest to have the line

module load fastsurfer freesurfer python > /dev/null 2>&1 ; source $FREESURFER_HOME/SetUpFreeSurfer.sh

in a bash script file. Alternatively, you can add this line to each line in your swarm command file.

Create a swarmfile (e.g. fastsurfer.swarm). For example:

export tmpdir=/lscratch/$SLURM_JOBID;run_fastsurfer.sh --t1 $SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/mri/orig.mgz --sid bert --sd /lscratch/${SLURM_JOB_ID}/analysis
export tmpdir=/lscratch/$SLURM_JOBID;run_fastsurfer.sh --t1 $SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/mri/orig.mgz --sid bert --sd /lscratch/${SLURM_JOB_ID}/analysis 
export tmpdir=/lscratch/$SLURM_JOBID;run_fastsurfer.sh --t1 $SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/mri/orig.mgz --sid bert --sd /lscratch/${SLURM_JOB_ID}/analysis 

Submit this job using the swarm command.

swarm -f fastsurfer.swarm [-t #] --gres=lscratch:5

where

-g #	Number of Gigabytes of memory required for each process (1 line in the swarm command file)
--gres=lscratch:5	allocate 5 GB of local disk for each swarm subjob