Memory Issue

[jdslatermd]

Hi all. First of all, AWESOME software package - thank you!

Second (and yes, I know the short and easy answer is get a system with more memory), when attempting to run Brainsuite on my laptop (Windows Vista, 4G RAM, running on a Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 at 2.6 GHz), I can get the sequential cortical processing completed all the way up to surface parameterization. At that point, trying to run that module triggers an "out of memory" error. Of interest, the task manager shows only 2.4 G of the physical memory occupied at that point.

Is there some easy way for me to free up or allow access to more memory (deleting temp files not really needed at that point, adjusting the operating system memory allocation, et cetera) or perhaps saving each of the pieces produced up to that point and using the command line? Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Jeremy Slater

[shattuck]

Hi Jeremy -

I'm glad to hear you like the software.

I am assuming you are using the latest (09) version. Yes, you should be able to save out the surfaces and run them through the parameterization portion of the script on the command line. Many of the memory sinks in the program are kept around for the purpose of making the program interactive and allowing you to backtrack and redo a step. I am looking into having a setting that will let you free some of this memory, but at the moment those aren't accessible to users. The command line modules don't have this problem as they save the intermediate data to disk.

The memory limitation is because the code is 32-bit, so Windows will only give the process space 2GB. We worked on several of the components to reduce their memory footprint to try to have this be enough to fit the whole processing stream into 2GB, but depending on your particular image it may take more. I will be making a 64-bit version, which should let you use more of your available memory, but this needs to be tested a bit further and will also require that you use a 64-bit version of Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7.

David