read.tract.bundles: Read tract (streamline) files into named bundles.

In fsbrain: Managing and Visualizing Brain Surface Data

Read tract (streamline) files into named bundles.

Description

Reads one or more tract files in TRK or TCK format (see the details) and returns them as a named list of bundles, i.e., one entry per file. This is the input format of vis.tracts. A single directory can be passed to read a whole tract atlas (one file per bundle, e.g. the XTRACT atlas, see download_xtract_tracts).

Usage

read.tract.bundles(
  paths,
  coords = "ras",
  transform_matrix = NULL,
  max_tracks = Inf,
  skip_tracks = 0L,
  bbox = NULL,
  pattern = "\\.(trk|tck)(\\.gz)?$",
  silent = FALSE
)

Arguments

paths	character string, either the path to a directory containing tract files, or a vector of paths to tract files.
coords	character string or NULL, the coordinate system of the returned coordinates for TRK files, see read.dti.trk. The default 'ras' returns RAS+ mm coordinates, which is required to combine the tracts with the fsbrain template surfaces: 'native' returns the coordinates as stored, which for TRK files is usually a voxel grid, so the result will be mirrored when plotted. Note that this parameter has no effect for TCK files, which do not store a transformation and are always returned as stored.
transform_matrix	a 4x4 numeric matrix or NULL. If given, it is applied to the coordinates of all files after reading them, e.g. to move a tract atlas from MNI space into the space of the surfaces, see the note in vis.tracts.
max_tracks	numeric, the maximum number of streamlines to read per file. Use Inf (the default) to read all of them. Reading a subset is the way to handle whole-brain tractograms, which can contain millions of streamlines and cannot be plotted (or held in memory) as a whole.
skip_tracks	integer, the number of streamlines to skip per file, see read.dti.tck.
bbox	numeric vector of length 6 or NULL, a bounding box to select the streamlines that pass through a region, see read.dti.tck. The box is interpreted in the coordinate system given by coords.
pattern	character string, a regular expression to select the files in a directory. Ignored if paths is not a directory.
silent	logical, whether to suppress the progress messages.

Details

The files are read with the readers of the 'freesurferformats' package. Both the TrackVis TRK format (used by FSL, DSI Studio, AFQ, TractSeg and the XTRACT atlas) and the MRtrix3 TCK format (used by MRtrix3, QSIRecon, MRtrix3_connectome) are supported; TCK files may be gzip-compressed, TRK files may not. The bundle names are the file names without the extension, e.g. 'CST_L.trk' becomes the bundle 'CST_L'.

Note that TRK files store a transformation matrix which is not necessarily the identity: a TRK file can contain coordinates in a voxel grid (e.g. all files of the XTRACT atlas do). With the default coords = "ras", the coordinates are returned in RAS+ mm space, which is what the template surfaces of fsbrain are in, see the parameter documentation. Pass coords = "native" to get the coordinates exactly as stored in the file.

Value

named list of fs.tracts instances, one per file (see fs.tracts). The names are the file names without the extension. The attribute 'files' contains the file paths, and the attribute 'coords_space' the coordinate system of the coordinates ('ras' or 'native', see the parameter coords). An entry which was read from a TCK file is a TCK entry, i.e., its [[i]] entries are coordinate matrices, while the entries of a TRK file also contain the per-point scalars and per-track properties of the file.

See Also

Other tracts functions: download_xtract_tracts(), vis.tracts()

Examples

## Not run: 
  # Read a whole tract atlas from a directory, one bundle per file:
  atlas_dir = file.path(get_optional_data_filepath("tracts"), "xtract_tiny");
  bundles = read.tract.bundles(atlas_dir);
  names(bundles);
  fs.tracts.lengths(bundles$CST_L);

  # Read a single bundle:
  cst = read.tract.bundles(file.path(atlas_dir, "CST_L.trk"));

## End(Not run)

fsbrain documentation built on Sept. 27, 2026, 1:07 a.m.