MINC 2.0 Structural Attributes

Several MINC attributes are used to describe the types of variables and the relationships among variables.

These variables are considered ``structural'' in the sense that they convey no useful information about the medical image stored in the MINC file, but instead serve to support the MINC format itself.

Each of these attributes (except for comments) should be considered mandatory for any MINC standard variable.

1. comments - String giving descriptive information about the variable or group, provided for informational purposes only.
2. dimorder - String identifying the symbolic dimensions associated with the data object. This attribute is an ordered, comma-separated list of the names of these dimensions. All non-scalar MINC variables must define this attribute. See section 2.3 for additional information on this attribute.

3. vartype - String identifying the class of the variable, one of ``group________'', `` dimension____'', ``dim-width____, or ``var_attribute''.

4. varid - String which identifies the variable's relationship to the MINC specification. All MINC standard variables should set this to ``MINC standard variable''. Non-standard variables may either ignore this attribute or set it to some other string value.

5. version - String identifying the version of this variable. This refers to the format of the variable, not the format of the file itself. In MINC 2.0, this string is always set to ``MINC Version 1.0'' for MINC standard variables. This value is used for backward compatibility with MINC 1.0 software.