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Tutorials

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Download and Install

This page covers the necessary steps to install and run NIPY. Below is a list of required dependencies, along with additional software recommendations.

NIPY is currently ALPHA quality, but is rapidly improving. If you are trying to get some work done wait until we have a stable release. For now, the code will primarily be of interest to developers.

Dependencies

Must Have

Python 2.4 or later

NumPy 1.2 or later

SciPy 0.7 or later
Numpy and Scipy are high-level, optimized scientific computing libraries.
PyNifti
We are using pynifti for the underlying file IO for nifti files.
gcc
NIPY does contain a few C extensions for optimized routines. Therefore, you must have a compiler to build from source. XCode (OSX) and MinGW (Windows) both include gcc. (Once we have binary packages, this requirement will not be necessary.)

Strong Recommendations

iPython
Interactive python environment.
Matplotlib
2D python plotting library.

Installing from binary packages

Currently we do not have binary packages. Until we do, the easiest installation method is to download the source tarball and follow the Building from source code instructions below.

Building from source code

Developers should look through the development quickstart documentation. There you will find information on building NIPY, the required software packages and our developer guidelines.

If you are primarily interested in using NIPY, download the source tarball and follow these instructions for building. The installation process is similar to other Python packages so it will be familiar if you have Python experience.

Unpack the tarball and change into the source directory. Once in the source directory, you can build the neuroimaging package using:

python setup.py build

To install, simply do:

sudo python setup.py install

Note: As with any Python installation, this will install the modules in your system Python site-packages directory (which is why you need sudo). Many of us prefer to install development packages in a local directory so as to leave the system python alone. This is mearly a preference, nothing will go wrong if you install using the sudo method. To install in a local directory, use the –prefix option. For example, if you created a local directory in your home directory, you would install nipy like this:

python setup.py install --prefix=$HOME/local