Physiological and other continuous recordings

Template:

sub-<label>/[ses-<label>/]
    func/
        <matches>[_recording-<label>]_physio.tsv.gz
        <matches>[_recording-<label>]_physio.json
        <matches>[_recording-<label>]_stim.tsv.gz
        <matches>[_recording-<label>]_stim.json

Optional: Yes

Where <matches> corresponds to task file name without the _bold.nii[.gz] suffix. For example: sub-control01_task-nback_run-1. If the same continuous recording has been used for all subjects (for example in the case where they all watched the same movie) one file can be used and placed in the root directory. For example:task-movie_stim.tsv.gz

Physiological recordings such as cardiac and respiratory signals and other continuous measures (such as parameters of a film or audio stimuli) can be specified using two files: a gzip compressed TSV file with data (without header line) and a JSON for storing the following metadata fields:

Field name	Definition
SamplingFrequency	REQUIRED. Sampling frequency in Hz of all columns in the file.
StartTime	REQUIRED. Start time in seconds in relation to the start of acquisition of the first data sample in the corresponding neural dataset (negative values are allowed).
Columns	REQUIRED. Names of columns in file.

Additional metadata may be included as in any TSV file to specify, for example, the units of the recorded time series. Please note that in contrast to other TSV files this one does not include a header line. Instead the name of columns are specified in the JSON file. This is to improve compatibility with existing software (FSL PNM) as well as make support for other file formats possible in the future. Recordings with different sampling frequencies and/or starting times should be stored in separate files. The following naming conventions should be used for column names:

Column name	Definition
cardiac	continuous pulse measurement
respiratory	continuous breathing measurement
trigger	continuous measurement of the scanner trigger signal

Any combination of those three can be included as well as any other stimuli related continuous variables (such as low level image properties in a video watching paradigm).

Physiological recordings (including eye tracking) should use the _physio suffix, and signals related to the stimulus should use _stim suffix. For motion parameters acquired from scanner side motion correction please use _physio suffix.

More than one continuous recording file can be included (with different sampling frequencies). In such case use different labels. For example: _recording-contrast, _recording-saturation. The full file name could then look like this: sub-control01_task-nback_run-2_recording-movie_stim.tsv.gz

For multi-echo data, physio.tsv file is applicable to all echos of particular run. For eg:

sub-01_task-cuedSGT_run-1_physio.tsv.gz
sub-01_task-cuedSGT_run-1_echo-1_bold.nii.gz
sub-01_task-cuedSGT_run-1_echo-2_bold.nii.gz
sub-01_task-cuedSGT_run-1_echo-3_bold.nii.gz

Example:

sub-control01/
    func/
        sub-control01_task-nback_physio.tsv.gz

(after decompression)

34  110 0
44  112 0
23  100 1

sub-control01/
    func/
        sub-control01_task-nback_physio.json

{
   "SamplingFrequency": 100.0,
   "StartTime": -22.345,
    "Columns": ["cardiac", "respiratory", "trigger"],
   "cardiac": {
       "Units": "mV"
   }
}