[Neuroimaging] [PySurfer] Brain's save_image method produces images with only background color

Roan LaPlante rlaplant at nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
Fri Sep 16 14:36:08 EDT 2016


If that's the problem, xvfb should still be a viable workaround in the nx
context, right?

On Sep 16, 2016 12:30 PM, "Gael Varoquaux" <gael.varoquaux at normalesup.org>
wrote:

> Nx has always been a problem with Mayavi (or actually VTK, which is the
> underlying technology). Basically, it interfers with the openGL contexts,
> and in some cases the buffer cannot be captured well. Hence the black
> image.
>
> IMHO, the bug is in NX or the mesa driver, or both.
>
> Gaël
>
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 12:00:15PM -0400, John Pellman wrote:
> > Pysurfer isn't running headless- it's using x2go, which is based upon
> the nx
> > protocol, a technology that improves the ability of X11 to function over
> a
> > network connection. Therefore, I don't think that Xvfb is related.
> xvfbwrapper
> > might be usable as a workaround, however.
>
> > As I mentioned in my last post, I traced the offending method back to
> mayavi.
> > I've opened an issue related to this here.
>
> > Kirstie- if you'd be willing to refer your sysadmin to this thread I
> think that
> > would be great, as I would be interested in hearing what theories or
> potential
> > fixes he/she might have for this issue as well.
>
> > --John
>
> > On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 5:43 AM, JB Poline <jbpoline at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >     That's a cool idea and package - thanks for pointing to this !
>
> >     On 16 September 2016 at 02:40, Ariel Rokem <arokem at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> >         On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 1:33 PM, Kirstie Whitaker <
> kw401 at cam.ac.uk>
> >         wrote:
>
> >             Hi John,
>
> >             I'm travelling at the moment but I've had problems with
> pysurfer
> >             showing beautiful brains on the screen but only saving a
> black box
> >             to file. It happened right after our systems admin updated a
> few
> >             things but I haven't been able to get a clear list from him
> of what
> >             changed except: everything should work.
>
> >             My point with this email is please do share back what you
> >             learn.....even if it ends up being not a pysurfer problem.
> At the
> >             moment my workaround is to move everything I do to a
> different
> >             cluster that works!! Non efficient to say the least!
>
> >             Thank you
> >             Kirstie
>
> >             Sent from my iPhone, please excuse any typos or excessive
> brevity
>
> >             On 15 Sep 2016, at 12:44, John Pellman <
> pellman.john at gmail.com>
> >             wrote:
>
>
> >                 I've had at this a little bit more and my current
> suspicion is
> >                 that this behavior is the result of an interaction
> between our
> >                 remote desktop service (x2go) and Mayavi.
>
> >                 I created a an identical Miniconda environment for
> Pysurfer on
> >                 both our server and my laptop and ran the following code
> to
> >                 test this theory:
>
>
> >                     # The Basic Visualization demo from the Pysurfer
> gallery.
> >                     from surfer import Brain
>
> >                     print(__doc__)
>
> >                     """
> >                     Define the three important variables.
> >                     Note that these are the first three positional
> arguments
> >                     in tksurfer (and pysurfer for that matter).
> >                     """
> >                     subject_id = 'fsaverage'
> >                     hemi = 'lh'
> >                     surface = 'inflated'
>
> >                     """
> >                     Call the Brain object constructor with these
> >                     parameters to initialize the visualization session.
> >                     """
> >                     brain = Brain(subject_id, hemi, surface)
>
> >                     # Save an image out to /tmp
> >                     print 'Saving out an image to /tmp using
> Brain.save_image.'
> >                     brain.save_image('/tmp/brain.png')
>
> >                     # Looking at just the screenshot method of
> pysurfer's Brain
> >                     object.
> >                     # This is called by save_image and is fed into
> >                     scipy.misc.imsave.
> >                     # If the boolean expression evaluated here is true,
> then
> >                     only a black
> >                     # background is being fed into scipy's misc.imsave
> method
> >                     for evaluation.
> >                     x = brain.screenshot()
> >                     print 'Test pysurfer\'s Brain.screenshot.'
> >                     if sum(x.flatten()==0)!=len(x.flatten()):
> >                         print 'Pass'
> >                     else:
> >                         print 'Fail'
>
> >                     # Looking at the Mayavi mlab.screenshot method.
> >                     # This is called by screenshot_single, which is
> called by
> >                     Brain's screenshot.
> >                     # If the boolean expression evaluated here is true,
> then
> >                     only a black
> >                     # background is being fed into Brain.screenshot()
> >                     from mayavi import mlab
> >                     x = mlab.screenshot(brain.brain_matrix[0,0]._f,
> 'rgb',
> >                     False)
> >                     print 'Test mayavi\'s mlab.screenshot'
> >                     if sum(x.flatten()==0)!=len(x.flatten()):
> >                         print 'Pass'
> >                     else:
> >                         print 'Fail'
>
>
> >                 On the server through an x2go session both
> Brain.screenshot and
> >                 mlab.screenshot failed to produce a non-blank image,
> while on
> >                 my laptop's local environment both of these methods did
> produce
> >                 the desired output (i.e., there were some nonzero
> outputs).
>
> >                 Since this doesn't seem to be an error with pysurfer in
> >                 particular, I'm going to proceed to see if anyone using
> Mayavi
> >                 with x2go or nx has encountered similar issues by
> querying
> >                 their forums / issue pages.  I just wanted to leave this
> here
> >                 if someone else encounters the same issue in the future.
>
>
> >         A shot in the dark: Could it be something to do with running
> headless?
> >         Maybe running this under XVFB (e.g. through xvfbwrapper) would
> help?
>
> >         Ariel
> >
>
> >                 --John
>
> >                 On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 1:24 PM, John Pellman <
> >                 pellman.john at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >                     It looks like it might be related to the following
> issue
> >                     described at StackOverflow:
>
> >                     http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16543634/
> >                     mayavi-mlab-savefig-gives-an-empty-image
>
> >                     On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 2:00 PM, John Pellman <
> >                     pellman.john at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >                         Hi all,
>
> >                         I'm encountering a peculiar Pysurfer error on our
> >                         server and I was wondering if anyone has
> encountered
> >                         anything similar or might have some insight into
> how I
> >                         can tackle it.  Basically, when our researchers
> try to
> >                         save a png image using Brain.save_image() or
> >                         Brain.save_imageset() the images produced only
> contain
> >                         the background color (as you may have inferred
> from the
> >                         subject line).  I've traced this back to Scipy
> method
> >                         (scipy.misc.imsave), but it looks like this
> would only
> >                         output an empty png if the image passed in were
> >                         completely zeroed out.  Our setup uses the
> following
> >                         versions of pysurfer/its dependencies:
>
> >                         Numpy: 1.10.0.dev0+1fe98ff
> >                         Scipy: 0.17.0.dev0+f2f6e48
> >                         Ipython: 3.1.0
> >                         nibabel: 2.0.0
> >                         Mayavi: 4.4.2
> >                         matplotlib: 1.4.3
> >                         PIL: 1.1.7
> >                         Pysurfer: 0.5
>
> >                         This setup is running within a Miniconda
> environment
> >                         using Python 2.7.11.  I'm uncertain if this is
> related,
> >                         but running the example code here produces the
> >                         following warning:
>
> >                         (ipython:20765): Gdk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/
> >                         gtk+2.0-2.24.27/gdk/x11/gdkdrawable-x11.c:952
> drawable
> >                         is not a pixmap or window
>
> >                         Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
>
> >                         Best,
> >                         John Pellman
>
>
>
>
>
> >                 _______________________________________________
> >                 Neuroimaging mailing list
> >                 Neuroimaging at python.org
> >                 https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/neuroimaging
>
>
> >             _______________________________________________
> >             Neuroimaging mailing list
> >             Neuroimaging at python.org
> >             https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/neuroimaging
>
>
>
>
> >         _______________________________________________
> >         Neuroimaging mailing list
> >         Neuroimaging at python.org
> >         https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/neuroimaging
>
>
>
>
> >     _______________________________________________
> >     Neuroimaging mailing list
> >     Neuroimaging at python.org
> >     https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/neuroimaging
>
>
>
>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Neuroimaging mailing list
> > Neuroimaging at python.org
> > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/neuroimaging
>
>
> --
>     Gael Varoquaux
>     Researcher, INRIA Parietal
>     NeuroSpin/CEA Saclay , Bat 145, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette France
>     Phone:  ++ 33-1-69-08-79-68
>     http://gael-varoquaux.info            http://twitter.com/GaelVaroquaux
> _______________________________________________
> Neuroimaging mailing list
> Neuroimaging at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/neuroimaging
>
>
>
> The information in this e-mail is intended only for the person to whom it
> is
> addressed. If you believe this e-mail was sent to you in error and the
> e-mail
> contains patient information, please contact the Partners Compliance
> HelpLine at
> http://www.partners.org/complianceline . If the e-mail was sent to you in
> error
> but does not contain patient information, please contact the sender and
> properly
> dispose of the e-mail.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/neuroimaging/attachments/20160916/b7b5ae94/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the Neuroimaging mailing list