Hi Daniel,
Thank you for the suggestions. Incidentally, earlier today I got a pretty good result with lpa on inverted T2 with some additional constraints. But I'll give nmi on non-inverted a try as well.
I did pretty tight box-cropping. I can try a sphere too, but my concern is that some of the scans were acquired with in front of the frontal poles and the occipital lobe was even partially left out in some. So a spherical mask will remove some tissues external to the brain but also some brain tissue. Still alignment might work better.
I think I only have CT of one of these monkeys, but I will try this approach at least in him!
Thanks again,
Pawel