It is very often the case that the data provided by the scanning facility is not in the format you require to perform the actual data processing and analysis. This page tries to cover the diverse format conversions that might be necessary for you to analyze your data.

There are different scenarios, which each in comes with different prerequisites:

• a working installation of SPM5 or SPM8
• if additional scripting is desired, NeuroElf can be used

• a working installation of BrainVoyager QX

To ensure that the sorted list of filenames to be imported are in a correct temporal order, the use of the renamedicom function is highly recommended (unless you can confirm that the files you have already are properly named).

This functionality is not yet available as a compound function, but can be easily achieved by using the following code (adapted to your specific situation, of course):

% load the DICOM import job file
jobs = neuroelf_file('p', 'spm5_dicomimport_job');
jobs = jobs.jobs;
 
% use SPM's defaults
spm_defaults; % for SPM8 use spm('defaults', 'FMRI');
 
% change into your study's folder
cd /Volumes/CHIP_project/Imaging/Subjects
 
% find all folders that contain DICOM import files (sessions)
importdirs = findfiles([pwd '/CHIP*/func/raw'], '*', 'dirs=1');
 
% remove subjects that have already been imported
donedirs = findfiles([pwd '/CHIP*/func'], 'run*', 'dirs=1');
for dc = 1:numel(donedirs)
 
    % take out those which match the CHIP* part
    [study, chip] = fileparts(fileparts(donedirs{dc}));
    importdirs(~isemptycell(regexp(importdirs, chip))) = [];
end
 
% for all remaining session
for dc = 1:numel(importdirs)
 
    % find dicom files
    dcmfiles = findfiles(importdirs{dc}, '*.dcm');
 
    % no files, continue
    if isempty(dcmfiles)
        continue;
    end
 
    % figure out the target folder
    [study, target] = fileparts(fileparts(dcmfiles{1}));
 
    % create target folder
    target = [fileparts(study) '/run_' target];
    mkadir(target);
 
    % put settings into job
    jobs{1}.util{1}.dicom.data = dcmfiles;
    jobs{1}.util{1}.dicom.outdir{1} = target;
 
    % run import job
    spm_jobman('run', jobs);
end
 
% Done.