stream_pixels(1)

💖 stream_pixels — the vibe ✨

okay bestie so this is a page from the CMTK manual — The Computational Morphometry Toolkit — and the tool we're hyping up today is stream_pixels. it's a command-line moment, section 1 of the manual, and honestly it's giving "pipe my pixels straight into your pipeline" energy. let's get into it 💅

---

🌈 NAME

stream_pixels — stream pixel data from one or more images straight to Standard Output. no cap, that's the whole job 🫶

---

🎀 SYNOPSIS

stream_pixels ImagePaths

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION

so here's the tea: this tool reads one or more images and writes all their pixels out to standard output in binary form. 🌸

optionally (optional!! it's optional) each image can be:

• reoriented to a specified anatomical orientation, and/or
• converted to a different data type.

why would you even want this? because it's literally perfect for piping image data through a pipeline — e.g., the Camino DTI toolkit. it's basically the bestie that hands your pixels to the next bestie in line 💜

---

✨ OPTIONS ✨

🌟 Global Toolkit Options (these are shared by all CMTK tools, so they're the communal closet of flags)

• --help — writes the list of basic command line options to standard output. your starter pack 💖
• --help-all — writes the complete list of basic and advanced command line options to standard output. the deluxe version.
• --wiki — writes the list of command line options to standard output in MediaWiki markup.
• --man — writes man page source in 'nroff' markup to standard output. meta moment much?
• --version — writes toolkit version to standard output.
• --echo — writes the current command line to standard output. it's repeating you back, iconic.
• --verbose-level <integer> — set verbosity level.
• --verbose, -v — increment verbosity level by 1 (deprecated; supported for backward compatibility). > it's deprecated bestie, we keep it around for the old heads but don't make it your whole personality 😭
• --threads <integer> — set maximum number of parallel threads (for POSIX threads and OpenMP). more threads more slay 🔥

👑 Main Options

• --reorient <string> — reorient all images to anatomy-based standard orientation, e.g., RAS or LPS for axial. default: no reorientation. [Default: NONE]
• --change-endian — change endianness. default: native endianness.
• --convert — convert data to new scalar type. default: no conversion. supported values: "char", "byte", "short", "ushort", "int", "uint", "float", "double", or use one of the following:
  • --char — 8 bits, signed integer
  • --byte — 8 bits, unsigned integer
  • --short — 16 bits, signed integer
  • --ushort — 16 bits, unsigned integer
  • --int — 32 bits, signed integer
  • --uint — 32 bits, unsigned integer
  • --float — 32-bits, single-precision floating point
  • --double — 64 bits, double-precision floating point

---

🫶 AUTHORS

Torsten Rohlfing, with contributions from Michael P. Hasak, Greg Jefferis, Calvin R. Maurer, Daniel B. Russakoff, and Yaroslav Halchenko. a whole squad, we love a collab 💜

---

📜 LICENSE

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html

---

🐛 BUGS

report bugs at http://nitrc.org/projects/cmtk/ — tell them everything, we're not gatekeeping 🙈

---

🌸 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CMTK is developed with support from the NIAAA under Grant AA021697, National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (N-CANDA): Data Integration Component. From April 2009 through September 2011, CMTK development and maintenance was supported by the NIBIB under Grant EB008381. give them their flowers 💐

---

and that's the whole page bestie 🎀 this was CMTK 3.3.1p2, dated Jun 24 2026 — stream_pixels(1), out. go pipe some pixels, you absolute main character 💅✨

---