Reslice diffusion datasets

Overview

Often in imaging it is common to reslice images in different resolutions. Especially in dMRI we usually want images with isotropic voxel size as they facilitate most tractography algorithms. In this example we show how you can reslice a dMRI dataset to have isotropic voxel size.

import nibabel as nib

The function we need to use is called resample.

from dipy.align.reslice import reslice
from dipy.data import get_fnames

We use here a very small dataset to show the basic principles but you can replace the following line with the path of your image.

fimg = get_fnames('aniso_vox')

We load the image and print the shape of the volume

img = nib.load(fimg)
data = img.get_data()
data.shape

(58, 58, 24)

Load the affine of the image. The affine is the transformation matrix which maps image coordinates to world (mm) coordinates.

affine = img.affine

Load and show the zooms which hold the voxel size.

zooms = img.header.get_zooms()[:3]
zooms

(4.0, 4.0, 5.0)

Set the required new voxel size.

new_zooms = (3., 3., 3.)
new_zooms

(3.0, 3.0, 3.0)

Start resampling (reslicing). Trilinear interpolation is used by default.

data2, affine2 = reslice(data, affine, zooms, new_zooms)
data2.shape

(77, 77, 40)

Save the result as a new Nifti file.

img2 = nib.Nifti1Image(data2, affine2)
nib.save(img2, 'iso_vox.nii.gz')

Or as analyze format or any other supported format.

img3 = nib.Spm2AnalyzeImage(data2, affine2)
nib.save(img3,'iso_vox.img')

Done. Check your datasets. As you may have already realized the same code can be used for general reslicing problems not only for dMRI data.