FreeSurfer

FreeSurfer is a brain imaging software package originally developed by Bruce Fischl, Anders Dale, Martin Sereno, and Doug Greve. Development and maintenance of FreeSurfer is now the primary responsibility of the Laboratory for Computational Neuroimaging at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. FreeSurfer contains a set of programs with a common focus of analyzing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of brain tissue. It is an important tool in functional brain mapping and contains tools to conduct both volume based and surface based analysis. FreeSurfer includes tools for the reconstruction of topologically correct and geometrically accurate models of both the gray/white and pial surfaces, for measuring cortical thickness, surface area and folding, and for computing inter-subject registration based on the pattern of cortical folds.

57,541 copies of the FreeSurfer software package have been registered for use as of April 2022 and it is a core tool in the processing pipelines of the Human Connectome Project, the UK Biobank, the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, and the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative.