mrtrix on Biowulf
MRtrix provides a large suite of tools for image processing, analysis and visualisation, with a focus on the analysis of white matter using diffusion-weighted MRI
Documentation
Important Notes
- Module Name: mrtrix (see the modules page for more information)
- Note that the GUI options have not been installed.
- Multithreaded
- Environment variables set
- MRTRIX_HOME
- mrtrix configuration: Users can set up a file /home/$USER/.mrtrix.conf containing mrtrix configuration options with default options that they desire. The list of possible settings for the mrtrix config file is detailed here. A sample config file is available in /usr/local/apps/mrtrix/mrtrix.conf.
Interactive job
Interactive jobs should be used for debugging, graphics, or applications that cannot be run as batch jobs.
Allocate an interactive session and run the program.
Sample session (user input in bold):
[user@biowulf]$ sinteractive 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 mrtrix [+] Loading eigen 3.3.4 ... [+] Loading Zlib 1.2.11 ... [+] Loading GSL 2.4 for GCC 4.8.5 ... [+] Loading FFTW 3.3.7 , compiled with gcc4.8.5 and openmpi2.1.2 ... [+] Loading mrtrix 3.0_RC2 ... [user@cn3144 ~]$ mrinfo /usr/local/apps/mrtrix/sample_data/data_slice_0000.nii.gz mrinfo: [WARNING] transform matrix contains invalid entries - resetting to sane defaults ************************************************ Image: "/usr/local/apps/mrtrix/sample_data/data_slice_0000.nii.gz" ************************************************ Dimensions: 128 x 104 x 1 x 65 Voxel size: 2 x 2 x 2 x 1 Data strides: [ 1 2 4 3 ] Format: NIfTI-1.1 (GZip compressed) Data type: signed 16 bit integer (little endian) Intensity scaling: offset = 0, multiplier = 1 Transform: 1 0 0 -127 0 1 0 -103 0 0 1 -0 comments: FSL5.0 [user@cn3144 ~]$ exit salloc.exe: Relinquishing job allocation 46116226 [user@biowulf ~]$
Batch job
Most jobs should be run as batch jobs.
Create a batch input file (e.g. mrtrix.sh). For example:
#!/bin/bash set -e module load mrtrix mrstats /usr/local/apps/mrtrix/sample_data/nodif_brain_mask.nii.gz mrhistogram /usr/local/apps/mrtrix/sample_data/nodif.nii.gz out.hist
Submit this job using the Slurm sbatch command.
sbatch [--cpus-per-task=#] [--mem=#] mrtrix.sh
Swarm of Jobs
A swarm of jobs is an easy way to submit a set of independent commands requiring identical resources.
Create a swarmfile (e.g. mrtrix.swarm). For example:
mrstats file1.nii.gz mrstats file2.nii.gz mrstats file3.nii.gz [...]
Submit this job using the swarm command.
swarm -f mrtrix.swarm [-g #] [-t #] --module mrtrixwhere
-g # | Number of Gigabytes of memory required for each process (1 line in the swarm command file) |
-t # | Number of threads/CPUs required for each process (1 line in the swarm command file). |
--module mrtrix | Loads the mrtrix module for each subjob in the swarm |