About Planner
Planner is a software that assists in MR-guided electrophysiology. The software enables easy visualization of the target site and allows the user to place virtual chambers, grids, and electrodes with different designs. It can also find optimal trajectories by finding the optimal grid hole, rotation and tilt angle. The other key feature of this software is its ability to automatically solve the registration problem between MR space and stereotactic space. It can report the stereotactic parameters needed to place the manipulator's tip and align it with the planned chamber position in any desierable direction. Recently, we added a new feature that allows to design custom grids with each grid hole going in arbitrary direction. Such grids can be automatically exported as a Solidworks model and printed on a high end 3D printer (Projet).
Publication: Detailed description of the approach can be found in the following manuscript: Ohayon S, Tsao DY, MR-Guided Stereotactic Navigation, J Neurosci Methods. 2012 Mar 15;204(2):389-97. Epub 2011 Dec 13
System Requirements
Operating System: Windows XP/Vista (32 or 64 bit), Linux (64 bit only), Mac (64 bit only) Matlab: Should be compatible with R2009b and later verions Solidworks: If you are planning to print custom grids using the grid export function, make sure you are running with Windows 64 bit. Solidworks 2011, 2012 and 2013 are supported. Memory: Although you can probably run planner with as little as 1G of RAM, it is usually preferred to have at least 4G. The more volumes you load, the more memory will be required. Screen Resolution: At least 800 vertical pixels. If you are running on a windows laptop with 1200x800 (or similar), move the taskbar location to the left. CPU: No real requirement here, but you probably want Core 2 Duo or stronger Graphic card: If you plan to visualize surfaces, a good graphics card is required (nVidia Geforce/Quadro)
Installation instructions:
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check out the repository
Window users: add a system environment variable (Start->Control Panel->System->Edit the system environment variables) Name: MATLAB64BIN Value: C:\MATLAB\R2009b_x64\bin\win64\MATLAB.exe (modify this to where you installed matlab)
use Runme_x64.bat to run planner
If you are using 32 bin version, add this variable: Name: MATLAB32BIN Value: C:\MATLAB\R2009b_x32\bin\win64\MATLAB.exe (modify this to where you installed the 32-bit version of matlab)
use Runme.bat to run planner
Linux/Mac users: use runme.csh to run planner (assuming matlab is already in the path)
Alternative method for all operating systems, that does not require to edit environment variables:
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Open which ever matlab version you want to use.
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Navigate to the Planner/Code folder and open start_Planner.m
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Execute start_Planner.m.
NOTE: When matlab asks, select "Change Folder", do NOT select "Add to Path", as start Planner will take care of temporarily adding the current Planner folder to the running malab instance's path variable. start_Planner will remove the Planner directory the path first if it is included already, before adding it again; this helps with issues when using Planner over a windows network share that might not automatically get notofications of file changes.