Import SPM data to Brainstorm

Discussions
1

Hello,

I got SPM data recorded from Elekta Neuromag with low-pass filtered (100 Hz). When I tried to import it to Brainstorm, the following error message showed up “Reference to non-existent field elecpos”. Is that normal? Or any additional steps are needed?

Best
SC

2

Hello,
The SPM files are currently supported only for EEG recordings (hence the “elecpos” field that is required).
I will work on this in the next few weeks and let you know when this import is available.
A better alternative would be for you to import directly the .fif files in Brainstorm, this would ensure all the SSP projectors are correctly imported (it won’t be the case if you import from SPM files).
Francois

3

Hello,

I fixed the SPM import code.
Can you please update Brainstorm and try again?
If you get any error message, please copy-paste here the full error messages.

Thanks,
Francois

4

Hi,

Thanks for updates! Now I can import the SPM file. But got error messages when tried to access the "Link to raw file"

Please see the error message below.

Thanks
SC

5

I don’t understand how you can get this error…
Can you update Brainstorm again (I just made some more changes), then restart Matlab, delete your file links and re-create them?

If you’re still getting this error, please send me a file example: zip the .mat/.dat files, upload the .zip somewhere (eg. dropbox, google drive…) then post the link here, or send it to me as a private message.

Note that there is some important information that is not read by SPM from some Elekta files (the PCA projectors generated by MaxFilter). Using in Brainstorm MEG recordings saved in SPM format should be only the last option to consider. If you can get the files in .fif format, read and process them directly in Brainstorm.
In general, the more file conversion steps you have, the highest the chance to lose important information.

Francois

6

Thanks for the data example.

The file you sent me does not have the same structure as what is produced by current version of SPM12. You should consider updating your SPM processing pipelines.
I added a fix in the Brainstorm code to handle these older structures. You can update Brainstorm and try again.