Tags: dataformat nicolet eeg

Getting started with Nicolet data

Note: please add additional information if you have additional knowledge about Nicolet data that you want to share with other FieldTrip users.

Introduction to the Nicolet file formats

The Nicolet system was once known as Nervus, launched in 1994/5 by Taugagreining in Iceland. This company was acquired by Viasys, then Carefusion, then Natus. Along the way the EEG system was renamed to Nicolet, then NicoletOne.

It is a popular clinical EEG format, especially in the Nordic countries.

The file format has been through some revisions. FieldTrip can read the file format from 2012 through 2020. For older formats, see this repository: https://github.com/janbrogger/NicoletEegImportOld. This requires access to the Nicolet DLLs.

  • Files with the extension .e can be read in by FieldTrip
  • Older .eeg files probably have the same format with minor changes (from 1994/95 to ca. 2004).

Limits

The file format supports different sampling rates. Currently FieldTrip only reads the channels with the most common sampling rate. This works well for clinical EEG.

Integrations

This code also enables EEGLAB users to read the Nicolet file format through the FILEIO plugin in EEGLAB.

Example

nicoletfile = 'someNicoletFile.e';

% using low-level functions
hdr = ft_read_header(nicoletfile);
dat = ft_read_data(nicoletfile, 'header', hdr);

% using high-level functions (recommended)
cfg            = [];
cfg.dataset    = nicoletfile;
cfg.continuous = 'yes';
cfg.channel    = 'all';
data           = ft_preprocessing(cfg);

cfg.viewmode   = 'vertical';
ft_databrowser(cfg, data);