The MNE software runs on Mac OSX and LINUX operating systems. The hardware and software requirements are:
The MNE software is distributed as a compressed tar archive (Mac OSX and LINUX) or a Mac OSX disk image (dmg).
Download the software package of interest. The file names follow the convention:
MNE-* <version>*- <rev> -* <Operating system>*-* <Processor>*.* <ext>*
The present version number is 2.7.0. The <rev> field is the SVN revision number at the time this package was created. The <Operating system> field is either Linux or MacOSX. The <processor> field is either i386 or x86_64. The <ext> field is ‘gz’ for compressed tar archive files and ‘dmg’ for Mac OSX disk images.
Go to the directory where you want the software to be installed:
cd <dir>
Unpack the tar archive:
tar zxvf <software package>
The name of the software directory under <dir> will be the same as the package file without the .gz extension.
Note
The software will be installed to /Applications/ <name> by default. If you want another location, select Choose Folder... on the Select a Destination screen in the installer.
Note
To provide centralized support in an environment with
MNE uses the ‘Netpbm’ package (http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/) to create image files in formats other than tif and rgb from mne_analyze and mne_browse_raw . This package is usually present on LINUX systems. On Mac OSX, you need to install the netpbm package. The recommended way to do this is to use the MacPorts Project tools, see http://www.macports.org/:
MacPorts requires that you have the XCode developer tools and X11 windowing environment installed. X11 is also needed by MNE. For Mac OSX Leopard, we recommend using XQuartz (http://xquartz.macosforge.org/). As of this writing, XQuartz does not yet exist for SnowLeopard; the X11 included with the operating system is sufficient.
The graphics performance of mne_analyze depends on your graphics software and hardware configuration. You get the best performance if you are using mne_analyze locally on a computer and the hardware acceleration capabilities are in use. You can check the On GLX... item in the help menu of mne_analyze to see whether the hardware acceleration is in effect. If the dialog popping up says Direct rendering context , you are using hardware acceleration. If this dialog indicates Nondirect rendering context , you are either using software emulation locally, rendering to a remote display, or employing VNC connection. If you are rendering to a local display and get an indication of Nondirect rendering context , software emulation is in effect and you should contact your local computer support to enable hardware acceleration for GLX. In some cases, this may require acquiring a new graphics display card. Fortunately, relatively high-performance OpenGL-capable graphics cards very inexpensive.
There is also an utility mne_opengl_test to assess the graphics performance more quantitatively. This utility renders an inflated brain surface repeatedly, rotating it by 5 degrees around the z axis between redraws. At each revolution, the time spent for the full revolution is reported on the terminal window where mne_opengl_test was started from. The program renders the surface until the interrupt key (usually control-c) is pressed on the terminal window.
mne_opengl_test is located in the bin directory and is thus started as:
$MNE_ROOT/bin/mne_opengl_test
On the fastest graphics cards, the time per revolution is well below 1 second. If this time longer than 10 seconds either the graphics hardware acceleration is not in effect or you need a faster graphics adapter.
The MNE software relies on the FreeSurfer software for cortical surface reconstruction and other MRI-related tasks. Please consult the FreeSurfer home page site at http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/ .
After you have installed the software, a good place to start is to look at the manual:
Chapters of interest for a novice user include: