nifti-1 format overview

Information about the Neuroimaging Informatics Technology Initiative (NIfTI), its Data Format Working Group (DFWG), and the nifti-1 format is available at the NIfTI website.

From the summary statement on the NIfTI website:

"NIfTI-1 is a somewhat new data format, proposed by the NIfTI DFWG as a short-term measure to facilitate inter-operation of functional MRI data analysis software packages. It is adapted from the widely used ANALYZETM 7.5 file format. The hope is that older non-NIfTI-aware software that uses the ANALYZE 7.5 format will still be compatible with NIfTI-1. NIfTI-1 uses the "empty space" in the ANALYZE 7.5 header to add several new features. These features are summarized in the Sep 2003 presentation and OHBM abstract (linked to below)."

Here are two documents that describe the nifti-1 format; more documentation is available on the NIfTI website.

  1. The abstract describing the format, that was presented at Human Brain Mapping Conference, 2004.
  2. The nifti-1 format specification.