The brainbundler repository contains the sources for two programs, which are both compiled using Qt (see http://qt.nokia.com/products/developer-tools/ for QT creator, or compile using qmake / make).
Bundler is a mean-shift-bundling command-line tool. It takes a binary 3D graph as the input, and outputs a .fib (binary vtk-file used in fiber tracking software). The input can either be two ascii files (one with coordinates, the other describing connections); or a .fib-file, which only contains straight edges without intermediate points.
bundler (-nodes "nodesfile" -cons "connectionsfile" / -fib ".fib-file") [-c_thr "compatibility threshold"] [-start_i "iterations in 1st cycle"] [-numcycles "number of cycles"]
Both ascii files and .fib files can be used for loading data into Bundler.
The file formats for the ascii files are as follows:
The nodes file contains three coordinates (x,y,z) for each node on each line:
x0 y0 z0 x1 y1 z1 x2 y2 z2 x3 y3 z3 etc...
The list of connections contains pairs of indices in the coordinate file. Note that the first line in that file is referred to as node 0:
0 3 2 3 4 1 etc...
To convert a pair of ascii-files to a single .fib-file, use the following command:
bundler -nodes "nodefile" -cons "connectionsfile" -numcycles 0
-c_thr: The compatibility threshold (default 0.8). This value determines how compatible two edges should be in order to move towards a common center of gravity. c_thr is responsible for how many distinct bundles emerge from the bundling: Too low values make everything bundle together, while too high values leave too many edges unbundled.
-start_i: Number of iterations in the first cycle; every following cycle has one iteration less. This parameter, like numcycles, influences the shape of the bundles.
-numcycles: Number of cycles. This parameter determines the shape of the bundles, as well as the number of subdivision points.
-bell: Width of the Gaussian kernel used to calculate the weights for the mean shift (default 5).
-smooth: Number of additional subdivision steps without shifting after the bundling (default 3). Determines how smooth the final connections appear.
...is a simple viewer for .fib-files. Basic usage is as follows:
fibviewer ".fib-file"
This would also be the place to start if you want to bundle your own data in a different format: Subclassing "Connections" should make it easy to look at data, and then export it to a .fib format file.
For an example, see "artificialconnections". It can be loaded with the following command:
fibviewer artificial
In order to write a .fib-File, which can then be bundled with Bundler:
fibviewer artificial -writefib
The following can be used to export the bundled connections as .obj files, for example to import them in 3D rendering software like Blender:
fibviewer artificial.fib -writeobj