.. _home:

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Diffusion Imaging In Python
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Dipy_ is a **free** and **open source** software project for
**diffusion** *magnetic resonance imaging* (dMRI) **analysis**. 


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Highlights
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In Dipy_ we care about methods which can solve complex problems efficiently and
robustly. QuickBundles is one of the many state-of-the art algorithms found
in Dipy_. It can be used to simplify large datasets of streamlines. See our
:ref:`gallery <examples_index>` of examples and try QuickBundles with your data. Here is a
video of QuickBundles applied on a simple dataset.

.. raw:: html

    <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kstL7KKqu94" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


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Announcements
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- **Release 0.6.0**, End of March, 2013
- **Dipy 3rd Sprint**, Berkeley, CA, April 2013
- **ISBI HARDI challenge 2013 will be based on Dipy**, February 2013


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Getting Started
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Here is a simple example showing how to calculate `color FA`. We
use a single Tensor model to reconstruct the datasets which are saved in a
Nifti file along with the b-values and b-vectors which are saved as text files.
In this example we use only a few voxels with 101 gradient directions::

    from dipy.data import get_data
    fimg, fbval, fbvec = get_data('small_101D')

    import nibabel as nib
    img = nib.load(fimg)
    data = img.get_data()

    from dipy.io import read_bvals_bvecs
    bvals, bvecs = read_bvals_bvecs(fbval, fbvec)

    from dipy.core.gradients import gradient_table
    gtab = gradient_table(bvals, bvecs)

    from dipy.reconst.dti import TensorModel
    ten = TensorModel(gtab)
    tenfit = ten.fit(data)

    from dipy.reconst.dti import fractional_anisotropy
    fa = fractional_anisotropy(tenfit.evals)

    from dipy.reconst.dti import color_fa
    cfa = color_fa(fa, tenfit.evecs)

As an exercise try to calculate the `color FA` with your datasets. Here is how
a slice should look like.

.. image:: _static/colorfa.png


We recommend to copy and paste this example in an IPython_ console. IPython_ helps interacting with the datasets easily. For example it is easy to find the size of the
dataset which is given by `data.shape`.

:ref:`Download <installation>` Dipy_ and try it for yourself.

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Next Steps
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You can learn more about how you to use Dipy_ with  your datasets by reading the examples in our :ref:`documentation`.

.. We need the following toctree directive to include the documentation
.. in the document hierarchy - see http://sphinx.pocoo.org/concepts.html
.. toctree::
   :hidden:

   documentation
   stateoftheart

.. include:: links_names.inc
