vis.tracts: Visualize white matter tracts (streamlines) on the cortical...

In fsbrain: Managing and Visualizing Brain Surface Data

Visualize white matter tracts (streamlines) on the cortical surface.

Description

Draws white matter streamlines (tractography data) as lines, with an optional semi-transparent brain surface as context. The streamlines can come from a tract file (TRK or TCK format), from a directory of such files (a tract atlas with one file per bundle, e.g. the XTRACT atlas, see download_xtract_tracts), or from in-memory data. This is the fsbrain equivalent of the plot_tracts function of the Python package yabplot.

Usage

vis.tracts(
  tracts,
  bundle_values = NULL,
  subjects_dir = NULL,
  template_id = "fs_LR_32",
  context = list(surface = "midthickness", alpha = 0.08, color = "#B0B0B0"),
  coords = "ras",
  transform_matrix = NULL,
  max_tracks = Inf,
  skip_tracks = 0L,
  bbox = NULL,
  tract_color = NULL,
  tract_makecmap_options = mkco.seq(),
  tract_width = 1,
  tract_width_range = NULL,
  tract_width_scale = c("none", "value"),
  color_by_orientation = FALSE,
  views = c("sd_lateral_lh", "sd_medial_lh", "sd_lateral_rh", "sd_medial_rh"),
  rgloptions = rglo(),
  rglactions = list(),
  style = "default",
  draw_colorbar = FALSE,
  silent = FALSE
)

Arguments

tracts	the tracts to draw. One of: a character string, the path to a tract file (TRK or TCK format) or to a directory containing one file per bundle (a tract atlas); a vector of tract file paths; an fs.tracts instance (freesurferformats); an (n, 3) matrix of coordinates (a single streamline); or a list of such objects. A list of (n, 3) matrices is interpreted as a single bundle (one tractogram), a list of fs.tracts instances as one bundle per entry. For the atlas case, the bundle names are the file names without extension.
bundle_values	numeric vector or NULL, one value per bundle, in the order of the bundles (or named with the bundle names). The values are mapped to colors, see the details.
subjects_dir	character string or NULL, the subjects directory that contains the template. If NULL, the standard fsbrain locations are searched, see resolve.template.subjects.dir.
template_id	character string, the template or subject to draw the context surface for. Defaults to 'fs_LR_32', the HCP-style surface space that is widely used for tractography data. Note that the template meshes are not part of this package, see download_fs_LR_32_meshes.
context	named list or NULL, the semi-transparent brain surface drawn around the tracts. Entries are 'surface' (the surface name, default 'midthickness'), 'alpha' (the transparency, default 0.08) and 'color' (default '#B0B0B0'). Set to NULL to draw the tracts without any context surface.
coords	character string or NULL, the coordinate system of TRK files, see read.tract.bundles. Ignored for in-memory data.
transform_matrix	a 4x4 numeric matrix or NULL, a transformation that is applied to all tract coordinates after reading them. Note that tract data and template surfaces have to be in the same space for the overlay to be correct: the XTRACT atlas, for example, is defined in MNI152 space, while the fs_LR_32 and fsaverage templates use an fsaverage-like (MNI305) space, which is close but not identical, and both are close enough for the overlay to look right without a transformation. Use this parameter if you have an accurate transformation, e.g. from a registration of the template to MNI152 space.
max_tracks	numeric, the maximum number of streamlines to read per file, see read.tract.bundles. This is the way to plot a subset of a whole-brain tractogram, which can contain millions of streamlines and cannot be drawn (or held in memory) as a whole.
skip_tracks	integer, the number of streamlines to skip per file, see read.tract.bundles.
bbox	numeric vector of length 6 or NULL, a bounding box to select the streamlines that pass through a region, see read.tract.bundles.
tract_color	vector of hex color strings, the color(s) of the tracts. Either a single color which is used for all bundles, or one color per bundle. Ignored if bundle_values is given. If both tract_color and bundle_values are NULL and color_by_orientation is FALSE, all tracts are drawn in a single default color.
tract_makecmap_options	named list of colormap options, see mkco.seq, used to map bundle_values to colors.
tract_width	a single positive number, the line width in pixels.
tract_width_range	numeric vector of length 2 or NULL, the range of the line widths used when the widths are scaled by the bundle values, see tract_width_scale. Defaults to c(0.5, 1.5) * tract_width.
tract_width_scale	character string, either 'none' (all lines have the same width, the default) or 'value' (the line width encodes the bundle values, which requires bundle_values to be given).
color_by_orientation	logical, whether to color the segments by their direction instead of by bundle, see the details. The colors then do not encode the bundle values, so no colorbar is drawn.
views	vector of character strings, the views to render, see brainviews. Pass NULL to only compute the renderables without rendering anything (e.g. to pass them to export).
rgloptions	named list, options for rgl::par3d(), see rglo.
rglactions	named list, actions to perform, see rglactions.
style	character string, the rendering style for the tracts, see material3d. The context surface is always rendered with its own fixed style, so that the requested transparency is used.
draw_colorbar	logical or one of the character strings 'vertical' or 'horizontal', whether to draw a colorbar for the bundle values. Note that the headless scimesh renderer backend does not support colorbars in this function, use export instead (see the return value).
silent	logical, whether to suppress the progress messages.

Details

The streamlines are drawn with the line renderable of the connectome code, see fs.coloredpaths, so the result is a regular fsbrain renderable list which works with both renderer backends (rgl and the headless scimesh renderer) and can be passed to export to create publication quality figures with a colorbar.

The colors can be defined in three ways: (1) as one value per bundle via bundle_values (e.g. a tractometry measure like the mean fractional anisotropy of each bundle), which is mapped to colors with tract_makecmap_options and produces a colorbar; (2) as a single color for all bundles via tract_color; or (3) per segment, based on the direction of the segment, via color_by_orientation, which is the classic DTI look (red/green/blue for left-right/anterior-posterior/superior-inferior).

Value

invisible named list of renderables: the entry tracts are the lines (an fs.coloredpaths instance), and context_lh and context_rh the context surfaces (if context is not NULL). The list can be passed to export.

See Also

Other tracts functions: download_xtract_tracts(), read.tract.bundles()

Examples

## Not run: 
  # Download the XTRACT tract atlas (see the function documentation):
  download_xtract_tracts("xtract_tiny");

  atlas_dir = file.path(get_optional_data_filepath("tracts"), "xtract_tiny");
  bundles = read.tract.bundles(atlas_dir);

  # One color per bundle, colors follow a colormap, with a colorbar in the figure:
  values = seq(0.2, 0.8, length.out = length(bundles));
  names(values) = names(bundles);
  tracts = vis.tracts(bundles, bundle_values = values,
    views = c("sd_lateral_lh", "sd_lateral_rh"));

  # Or a publication quality figure with 3 views and a colorbar:
  export(tracts, view_angles = c("sd_lateral_lh", "sd_dorsal", "sd_rostral"),
    draw_colorbar = "horizontal", colorbar_legend = "Mean FA",
    output_img = "tracts.png");

  # Draw a whole-brain tractogram from MRtrix (a subset, it is huge):
  vis.tracts("~/data/sub-01_streamlines.tck.gz", max_tracks = 20000);

## End(Not run)

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