Fetch a Template from TemplateFlow — get

Unified function to retrieve neuroimaging templates and related files from the TemplateFlow repository via the pure R templateflow package.

Usage

get_template(
  space = "MNI152NLin2009cAsym",
  variant = "brain",
  modality = "T1w",
  resolution = 1,
  cohort = NULL,
  desc = "brain",
  label = NULL,
  atlas = NULL,
  suffix = NULL,
  extension = ".nii.gz",
  path_only = FALSE,
  use_cache = TRUE,
  api_handle = NULL,
  ...
)

get_surface_template(
  template_id,
  surface_type,
  hemi,
  density = NULL,
  resolution = NULL,
  ...,
  load_as_path = TRUE
)

Arguments

space: Character string. The primary TemplateFlow identifier for the template space (e.g., "MNI152NLin2009cAsym"). Default: "MNI152NLin2009cAsym".
variant: Character string. A high-level descriptor for common template types. Supported: "brain" (default), "head", "mask", "probseg", "dseg". This is used to infer desc and sometimes suffix if they are not explicitly provided.
modality: Character string. The imaging modality or primary suffix for the template file. Supported: "T1w" (default), "T2w", "mask". This is used to infer suffix if not explicitly provided.
resolution: (Optional) Character string specifying the resolution, primarily for fsaverage variants (e.g., "06" for fsaverage6).
cohort: Character string. Optional cohort identifier.
desc: Character string. Specific TemplateFlow desc field. Defaults to "brain".
label: Character string. Specific TemplateFlow label field (e.g., "GM", "WM", "CSF").
atlas: Character string. Specific TemplateFlow atlas field (e.g., "Schaefer2018").
suffix: Character string. Specific TemplateFlow suffix field. Overrides any suffix inferred from modality or variant.
extension: Character string. The file extension. Default: ".nii.gz".
path_only: Logical. If TRUE, returns the file path as a string instead of loading as a NeuroVol. Default: FALSE.
use_cache: Logical. If TRUE (default), uses memoised NeuroVol loading.
api_handle: Deprecated and ignored. Kept for backward compatibility.
...: Additional arguments passed to the TemplateFlow query (e.g., hemi, density).
template_id: The main TemplateFlow template identifier for the surface (e.g., "fsLR", "fsaverage"). This is passed as the `space` argument to `get_template`.
surface_type: A character string indicating the type of surface to retrieve. Common values include: "pial", "white", "inflated", "midthickness", "sphere". This is passed as the `suffix` argument to `get_template`.
hemi: Character string, "L" for left hemisphere or "R" for right hemisphere. Passed as `hemi` to `get_template`.
density: (Optional) Character string specifying the surface density (e.g., "32k" for fsLR, "164k" for fsaverage). Forwarded to TemplateFlow as `density`.
load_as_path: Logical, whether to return only the path to the file. Defaults to `TRUE`.

Value

If any of space, variant, modality, resolution, or label are vectors of length > 1, a named list of results is returned. Otherwise a single neuroim2::NeuroVol or file path string.

If `load_as_path` is `TRUE`, a character string (path). If `load_as_path` is `FALSE`, the result of `as_neurovol`.

Details

The function performs several pre-flight checks: - Validates the existence of the specified space. - Validates the specified resolution against available resolutions.

Caching behaviour: - The templateflow R package maintains its own disk cache. - NeuroVol loading is memoised at the R session level to avoid re-reading large NIfTI files.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
  # Get default MNI T1w brain template
  mni_brain <- get_template()

  # Vectorized: Get MNI brain and mask variants
  mni_variants <- get_template(variant = c("brain", "mask"))

  # Path only
  path <- get_template(path_only = TRUE)
} # }
# \donttest{
  # Get the pial surface for the left hemisphere of fsLR 32k template (as path)
  # fslr_pial_L_path <- get_surface_template(template_id = "fsLR", surface_type = "pial",
  #                                        hemi = "L", density = "32k")
  # print(fslr_pial_L_path)
# }