FreeSurfer Download
FreeSurfer for Linux is distributed in the form of a .tar.gz file, and is installed from the terminal command-line.
The Mac OS X FreeSurfer distribution is a .dmg file. If using the Safari web browser, a GUI is automatically opened upon completion of the download to guide the installation. If using Firefox, the .dmg file must be saved to disk first, then click on the downloaded file in Finder to launch the install. Mac OS X users may want to see how the installation will procede, described here, before beginning the download. Note: Mac OS X users must have X11 installed prior to using FreeSurfer (in Finder, look for Applications->Utilities->X11). Mac OS Snow Leopard users will need to install XQuartz, per these instructions, in order for tksurfer to display properly.
FreeSurfer executables are available for the following platforms. Click on the filename to begin download, saving the file to your machine.
Stable 5.1 release
Please refer to the ReleaseNotes page for per-release information.
OS |
Platform |
Version |
Release Date |
Download |
Size |
Linux |
CentOS 4 x86_64 (64b) |
stable v5.1.0 |
24 May 2011 |
2984M |
|
Linux |
CentOS 4 (32b) |
stable v5.1.0 |
24 May 2011 |
2801M |
|
Mac OS X |
(Snow)Leopard (10.5/6.x) Intel |
stable v5.1.0 |
24 May 2011 |
2477M |
|
Mac OS X |
Tiger (10.4.11) PowerPC |
stable v5.1.0 |
24 May 2011 |
1669M |
|
Windows |
VirtualBox Ubuntu |
stable v5.1.0 |
24 May 2011 |
freesurfer-Virtualbox-linux-x86-stable-pub-v5.1.0-full.vdi, Documentation |
10072M |
wget
If you are having problems downloading the installation from your browser, you could use the command-line 'wget' utility ('curl -O' on the Mac):
wget ftp://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pub/dist/freesurfer/5.1.0/<filename>
where <filename> is the name in the table above. Note that the '-c' flag allows continuing a failed partial download.
Archive
Mirrored
Some releases are mirrored here.
Dev
Some nightly dev builds are here.
Notes
uname -m
If the output says 'x86_64', you have a 64-bit Intel-compatible machine.
Ubuntu users might need to do the following in order to use the qdec app:
cd /usr/lib ln -s libtiff.so.4 libtiff.so.3
Note that a license key file is necessary to run the FreeSurfer binaries (but is not necessary to download and install FreeSurfer).
Upon completion of the download, proceed to the installation section.
iSurf App
A brain segmentation tutorial application for the iPhone/iPad created by an external developer, making use of Freesurfer's segmentation, is available here.