The Neuroimaging Informatics Technology Initiative (nifti) file format was envisioned about a decade ago as a replacement to the then widespread, yet problematic, analyze 7.5 file format. The main problem with the previous format was perhaps the lack of adequate information about orientation in space, such that the stored data could not be unambiguously interpreted. Although the file was used by many imaging software projects, the lack of adequate information on orientation obliged some, most notably spm, to include, for every analyzed file, an accompanying file describing the orientation, such as a file with extension .mat.