Tags: faq trialfun

How can I transform trigger values from bits to decimal representation with a trialfun?

Some EEG acquisition systems allow users to represent trigger values in bits (see NETSTATION acquisition manual pages 62-72). At some point, the user might be also interested to transform the binary representation to decimal. You can archive a smooth conversion writing your own custom function for the trial definition (see also the preprocessing tutorial, the example1 and example2 to explore other approaches)

The following code transforms bits to decimal numbers in a *.RAW fileformat from NETSTATION EEG system whos trigger channels are named as β€œDIN”. For example the number 11 is represented with the following trigger sequence: DIN1 + DIN8 + DIN2. The trigger channel name can be changed and it is then LAB SPECIFIC. However you can follow the logic of the code and try to adapt it to a specific system

function trl = trialfun_bit2dec(cfg)

% TRIALFUN_BIT2DEC is a trialfun example function that illustrates how to
% convert trigger values from bits to decimal representation.
%
% To know more about how to extract events from a continuous trigger
% channel that have one or multiple continuously sampled TTL channels in
% the data see the private function READ_TRIGGER.M (trunk/fileo/private/)
%
% The trialdef structure can contain the following specifications
% cfg.dataset cfg.trialdef.eventtype cfg.trialdef.eventvalue
% cfg.trialdef.prestim cfg.trialdef.poststim

%%
hdr   = ft_read_header(cfg.dataset);
event = ft_read_event(cfg.dataset);

% bit to decimal conversion
for i=1:length(event);
switch event(i).value
  case 'DIN1'
    bit = 1;
  case 'DIN2'
    bit = 2;
  case 'DIN4'
    bit = 3;
  case 'DIN8'
    bit = 4;
  case 'DI16'
    bit = 5;
  otherwise
    error('weird');
end % switch

binarydata(bit, event(i).sample) = 1;
end

decimaldata = zeros(1,size(binarydata,2));
for i=1:size(binarydata,1)
decimaldata = decimaldata + binarydata(i,:) *(i-1)^2;
end

% reinsert them as decimal values
for i=1:length(event)
event(i).value = decimaldata(event(i).sample);
end

% define trials
trl = [];

for i=1:length(event)
if strcmp(event(i).type, cfg.trialdef.eventtype)
  % it is a trigger, see whether it has the right value
  if ismember(event(i).value, cfg.trialdef.eventvalue)
    % add this to the trl definition
    begsample     = event(i).sample - cfg.trialdef.prestim*hdr.Fs;
    endsample     = event(i).sample + cfg.trialdef.poststim*hdr.Fs - 1;
    offset        = -cfg.trialdef.prestim*hdr.Fs;
    trigger       = event(i).value; % remember the trigger (=condition) for each trial
    trl(end+1, :) = [round([begsample endsample offset])  trigger];
  end
end
end

% discard the repeated values
idx = any(diff(trl(:,1),1,1),2);
trl = trl(idx,:);
Tags: faq trialfun