Home ยป The NeNa product

Specifications

Product


The NeNa product package contains the necessities to perform image guided stereotaxy, and some additional options:

  • The complete NeNa software package running on every Windows XP/Vista system
  • The DriveBAY 3D position tracker and magnetic field transmitter, including 3 tracking probes
  • A license to use this software in combination with the specific DriveBAY tracker shipped to the customer.
  • A plastic hand-held pointer containing a DriveBAY probe, that can be used to navigate to the intended brain area
  • An elaborate user manual in English, Dutch or German including setup, step by step introduction to using NeNa for neural navigation and pointers on MRI image processing for neural navigation using SPM

Optional (additional fees apply):

 

  • A PC especially suited for the NeNa package
  • On site installation and training by the NeNa developers from Utrecht, the Netherlands
  • A head fixation support that can be used for neural navigation with NeNa
  • Support on (f)MRI image processing for use with neuronavigation in SPM (conditions apply).

Features & performace



    NeNa can target pre-selected brain areas with a precesion of 4 mm or better, depending on the number of marker positions used. It can load and visualize individual MRI scans, tissue maps (eg gray matter), fMRI activation maps and craniotopic facial markers in 3D. After navigation, the 3D probe and an extending beam can be seen hovering over the participants brain. Pre-set anatomical target markers can be pinpointed accurately, or one can link a virtual camera to the probe to obtain a birds-eye (or sniper) view from the handheld probe on the brain, with a cross-hair to aid targeting of the brain region of interest. Furthermore, NeNa contains tools to judge navigation accuracy, make suggestions how to improve it based on real-time simulations, test the 3D digitizing hardware for accuracy or disturbances from the environment, and many more.

Compatibility


The NeNa software requires the following minimal PC system

  • OS: Windows XP (preferred) or newer
  • Minimal 2 GB or RAM
  • 2GHz intel processor or equivalent
  • Graphics card with up-to-date 3D acceleration (eg at least NVIDIA GeForce FX or comparable)
  • Sufficiently large harddrive for MRI data (for one subject one typically requires ~20 MB)

Supported MRI data types

    The NeNa software is fully compatible with the out- and input data format of SPM (from version 99 to 8) for structural MRI, tissue maps (eg gray matter) and fMRI statistical activation maps (eg T-maps). Also, it reads nifti data from the more recent AFNI, FSL and Brainvoyager versions.

Formally, NeNa is compatible with:

  • Nifti 1.0, the new standard for most fMRI analysis packages such as SPM (5 and 8), FSL, AFNI or BrainVoyager. See http://nifti.nimh.nih.gov
  • Analyze 7.5, the nifti predecessor format used in SPM99 and SPM2

DriveBAY Hardware

    The driveBAY electronics unit from Ascension technologies digitizes 3D position and orientation of a hand held probe at a rate of 100Hz. It adopts a weak pulsed DC magnetic field generated by a small emitter, and uses amagnetic induction in the probe to determine its location and orientation. The spatial accuracy is better than 1 mm within a range of ~1m from the transmitter.