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Curated head shape for FSAverage - #14462

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larsoner merged 5 commits into
mne-tools:mainfrom
christianbrodbeck:fsaverage
Oct 28, 2026
Merged

larsoner merged 5 commits into
mne-tools:mainfrom
christianbrodbeck:fsaverage

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@christianbrodbeck

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What does this implement/fix?

MNE-Python ships a curated head shape for FSAverage that I used to use for coregistration (left-most picture). With the fetch_fsaverage function this head shape is not used anymore, and the result of watershed is used instead (middle). Was this change intentional? If not, this PR restores the old behavior by copying the curated head shape from mne-python in fetch_fsaverage, and using it in the coregistration GUI.

heads

Both the coregistration GUI and plot_alignment looked for outer_skin.surf
before the subject's own -head.fif, so a curated head surface (such as the
fsaverage head packaged with MNE) was never used when a watershed outer
skin was also present.
Both fsaverage zip files ship the watershed outer skin as
bem/fsaverage-head.fif, so the smoother head surface packaged with MNE
(previously only reachable through create_default_subject, which needs a
FreeSurfer install) was never used. This modification copies it over the extracted file when
fsaverage-head.fif was missing before the downloads; existing files are
left alone, consistent with the no-overwrite rule.
@larsoner

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Ugh this seems like an error on our part, thanks @christianbrodbeck ! I think it'll be cleaner to update the .zips as well, which I'll need to do. I'll do that and push a commit for the new hashes

@larsoner
larsoner requested a review from agramfort as a code owner October 28, 2026 18:19
@larsoner
larsoner enabled auto-merge (squash) October 28, 2026 18:22
@larsoner
larsoner merged commit ec30cd2 into mne-tools:main Oct 28, 2026
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2 participants