Hello,
I'm having a bit of trouble with the "Create Surface" step in FreeSurfer. I have a single mprage scan that creates a decent first pass surface, but there's still some brainstem and cerebellum attached to it. I followed the troubleshooting guidelines in the FreeSurfer manual regarding Failure of Automatic Cutting Planes. I went to Expert Preferences --> WMFill, and inputed the appropriate coordinates to separate the brainstem and cerebellum. The coordinates I used were not in Talairach space, but I assumed this was okay because the manual says to use original coordinates if you don't have Talairach coordinates. However, when I re-ran "Create Surface", nothing happened (i.e., filled volume and surface both still show the pons/cerebellum/brainstem attached). I read through the FreeSurfer mailing list archives and read that Talairach coordinates are indeed needed.
Here's my question: The volume I'm using shows a head that's slightly tilted about 10 degrees to the left, so I should probably do the Taliarach transformation anyway. However, I don't have the mni_tools installed on my computer (I had major installation problems with them). Anyway, could I do a taliarach transformation outside of Freesurfer (like in AFNI) and then tranfer that talairached volume to FreeSurfer? My concern is that the transformation will blur the volume, making segmentation difficult. What should I do?
Thanks, Peggy