FreeSurfer System Requirements

Summary of Requirements:
Operating System: Linux, Mac OS X, Windows (via VirtualBox)
Processor Speed: 2GHz at least
RAM: 4GB at least (8GB recommended)
Graphics card: 3D with its own graphics memory & accelerated OpenGL drivers
Install's Disk space usage: 8.5GB
Typical subject size: 370MB
Tutorial dataset size: 18GB
Other requirements: Matlab (only needed to run FS-FAST, the fMRI analysis stream)

Download

Important: It is essential to process all your subjects with the same version of FreeSurfer, on the same OS platform and vendor, and to be completely safe, even the same version of the OS.

Freesurfer 5.3 stable release

Please refer to the ReleaseNotes page for per-release information.

OS

Platform

Version

Release Date

Download

Size

Linux

CentOS 6 x86_64 (64b)

stable v5.3.0

15 May 2013

freesurfer-Linux-centos6_x86_64-stable-pub-v5.3.0.tar.gz

4.2G

Linux

CentOS 4 x86_64 (64b)

stable v5.3.0

15 May 2013

freesurfer-Linux-centos4_x86_64-stable-pub-v5.3.0.tar.gz

4.0G

Linux

CentOS 4 (32b)

stable v5.3.0

15 May 2013

freesurfer-Linux-centos4-stable-pub-v5.3.0.tar.gz

3.8G

Mac

Lion OX X 10.7 (64b Intel)

stable v5.3.0

15 May 2013

freesurfer-Darwin-lion-stable-pub-v5.3.0.dmg

3.5G

Mac

SnowLeopard OS X 10.6 (32b Intel)

stable v5.3.0

15 May 2013

freesurfer-Darwin-snowleopard-i686-stable-pub-v5.3.0.dmg

3.2G

Virtualbox

Xubuntu 12.04

stable v5.3.0

15 Aug 2013

freesurfer-Virtualbox-linux-x86-stable-pub-v5.3-full.vdi.gz

9.0G

Installation

Please select the instructions for the type you downloaded:

Set Up & Configuration

Set the default shell to be permanently switched to tcsh by typing the following in a terminal window and then pressing enter:

chsh -s /bin/tcsh

Set up your shell's configuration file (.tcshrc) so that FreeSurfer is sourced every time you open a new terminal window. You can do this by adding the two commands in the box below to any part of the .tcshrc file. Use pico or any other text editor to create a .tcshrc file or to open the .tcshrc file and make this change (i.e. type "pico .tcshrc" on the command-line).

setenv FREESURFER_HOME <freesurfer_installation_directory>/freesurfer
source $FREESURFER_HOME/SetUpFreeSurfer.csh

**Where <freesurfer_installation_directory> is replaced with the location you installed FreeSurfer (e.g., /Applications/freesurfer).

To save your changes in pico, hit Ctrl+x to exit and then type 'y' and press enter to save the changes.

To check that you have done everything correctly, open a new terminal window. You should see output similar to this:

Setting up environment for FreeSurfer/FS-FAST (and FSL)
FREESURFER_HOME /usr/local/freesurfer
FSFAST_HOME     /usr/local/freesurfer/fsfast
FSF_OUTPUT_FORMAT nii
SUBJECTS_DIR    /usr/local/freesurfer/subjects
MNI_DIR         /usr/local/freesurfer/mni

If you see the above, it means the SetUpFreeSurfer.csh script was sourced successfully.

If any warnings appear, it's usually safe to ignore them, but make sure that they are not stating that a file or directory that should exist cannot be found. If any error messages appear, check that the installation process was successfully completed.

License

You must register to obtain a license key here. The license is free but your FreeSurfer installation will not work without it.

Once you register, you will be emailed the license key. This license key needs to be saved in a text file in the location where you installed FreeSurfer. To do this, open a new terminal window and type each line of command below (hit enter after each line):

cd $FREESURFER_HOME 
pico .license

Copy and paste the text between the "CUT HERE" lines in the license email onto the blank screen (which is the text file called .license). To save your changes in pico, hit Ctrl+x to exit and then type 'y' and press enter to save the changes.

Note: Registering for the license key does not enable one to post messages to the Freesurfer mailing list. To post to the list, you must subscribe to the list by following this link

Test your FreeSurfer Installation

Close any terminal windows you have open and then open a new one.

Copy and paste this command into the terminal window:

freeview -v $SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/mri/norm.mgz \ 
$SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/mri/aseg.mgz:colormap=lut:opacity=0.2 \
-f $SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/surf/lh.white:edgecolor=yellow \
-f $SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/surf/rh.white:edgecolor=yellow \
-f $SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/surf/lh.pial:annot=aparc:edgecolor=red \
-f $SUBJECTS_DIR/bert/surf/rh.pial:annot=aparc:edgecolor=red