First things first - converting images to the right format

If you have any experience with neuroimaging at all, you are likely familiar with the terms "DICOM" and "NIfTI." In case you're not, DICOM is the format in which most scanners tend to output their images, while NIfTI is the format you want them to be in for analysis in most any software.

This is generally a pretty straightforward procedure, and there are a bunch of softwares you can use to do the conversion. I tend to use DCM2NII (a part of the MRIcron software package - https://people.cas.sc.edu/rorden/mricron/dcm2nii.html). I have used DCM2NII for DICOM to NIfTI conversions on Apple, Windows and Linux and it's never lead me astray.

Once installed, simply select your output format (which depends on your analysis software and the kind of data you're working with), hit File --> DICOM to NIfTI, navigate over to the folder with the files you want to convert and select it. Simple enough!!