MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging 2017 | Page 18

The FreeSurfer group today. Photo courtesy of Caroline Magnain.
upon and extend the applicability of the software. Over
the next couple of years, endless hours of discussions
and of clacking away in writing new code paved the way
for the introduction of FreeSurfer. This finally came
in 1999 with a pair of papers in the journal NeuroIm-
age and an official launch at that year’s Human Brain
Mapping meeting in Dusseldorf, Germany—the latter
made possible by the indomitable efforts of the Center’s
Doug Greve and Thomas Witzel.
by Bell Labs. Fischl himself, presumably joking, sug-
gested they charge a premium for the software and call
it ExorbitantSurfer.
Finally, after considerable debate, they settled on the
more pithy—and indeed more accurate—FreeSurfer.
The software package was an immediate hit with the
neuroscience community, and its popularity has grown
exponentially in the years since. Today, FreeSurfer
The road to this point wasn’t always a smooth one, of boasts nearly 33,000 active licenses, with users around
course. Along the way the investigators encountered the the world applying it to a wide range of basic science and
occasional obstacle, the intermittent snag, that would clinical problems. It has driven important advances in
put at risk the continued vitality of the project.
psychiatry and genetics and seemingly countless other
areas, and helped to launch new techniques: among
Fischl points to one of these, in particular. In what may them diffusion imaging, in which the diffusion of water
have been the greatest existential threat to the software, molecules in the brain provides the MR contrast.
he says, the researchers couldn’t agree on a name for it.
Dale suggested “B-Vis,” short for “Brain Visualization” Led by Fischl, the FreeSurfer group itself—more
but also a nod to the crude yet often hilarious MTV formally known as the Laboratory for Computational
cartoon “Beavis and Butthead.” This idea was “univer- Neuroimaging—has also continued to make a mark.
sally panned,” as was Sereno’s characteristically esoteric Over the past 20 years, the group has endlessly advanced
contribution: “D,” a roundabout reference to the little- and extended the software, and worked tirelessly to
known “B,” a 1980s programming language developed serve the ever-expanding FreeSurfer community.
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