ET2BIDS - EyeTracker to BIDS

[esavary]

Authors

Elodie Savary <elodie.savary@chuv.ch>
Remi Gau remi.gau2@mcgill.ca
Oscar Esteban phd@oscaresteban.es

Summary

In the realm of neuroimaging, BIDS has become the de facto standard for structuring data. Its adoption has simplified the data management process, enabling researchers to focus on their scientific inquiries rather than the intricacies of data organization [gorgolewski2016]. However, the inclusion of eye-tracking data within the BIDS framework has remained a challenge, often requiring manual data rearrangement. The ET2BIDS project aimed to take a significant step toward incorporating eye-tracking data into BIDS, leveraging the bidsphysio library to facilitate this integration.

Bidsphysio is a versatile tool designed to convert various physiological data types, including CMRR, AcqKnowledge, and Siemens PMU, into BIDS-compatible formats. In particular, it offers a dedicated module called edf2bidsphysio to convert EDF files containing data from an Eyelink eyetracker. An advantageous feature of the bidsphysio library is its Docker compatibility, ensuring smooth cross-platform execution without the need for additional installations.
Before starting our project, a bug had been identified in the Docker image, which hindered the correct execution of the edf2bidsphysio module. Our primary focus was, therefore, to address and resolve this bug in order to enable the utilization of the Docker image for eye-tracking data conversion.

Results

The ET2BIDS project made significant progress in converting eye-tracking data into BIDS format. We initially processed the test data from the GitHub repository, overcoming the bug that had hindered the edf2bidsphysio module's execution. Moreover, with minor modifications to the module, we successfully processed a dataset acquired by the authors using an Eyelink eye tracker, showcasing potential bidsphysio versatility in handling various eye-tracking datasets.

Future prospects

The future of eye-tracking data integration into BIDS is evolving as we identify essential fields and metadata necessary for reproducible research. BIDS specifications for eye-tracking data are in development, with expanding guidelines for essential reporting in research studies [e.g., dunn2023].
As these guidelines grow, we will have to adapt bidsphysio to match the evolving BIDS standards, ensuring it converts eye-tracking data in accordance with the latest recommendations.

References (Bibtex)

@Article{gorgolewski2016,
title={The brain imaging data structure, a format for organizing and describing outputs of neuroimaging experiments},
author={Gorgolewski, Krzysztof and Auer, Tibor and Calhoun, Vince et al.},
journal={Scientific Data},
volume={3},
pages={160044},
year={2016},
doi={10.1038/sdata.2016.44},
url={https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.44}
}
@Article{dunn2023,
title={Minimal reporting guideline for research involving eye tracking (2023 edition)},
author={Dunn, Michael J. and Alexander, Robert G. and Amiebenomo, Omogbolahan M. et al.},
journal={Behavior Research},
year={2023},
doi={10.3758/s13428-023-02187-1},
url={https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02187-1}
}

[anibalsolon]

hello all, could you please provide the authors information in the following link by May 15th?
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSckbC4F6KOtge1KOyzwj5yIbWR7tB8HrnqQ4KPZB7Mr3UcvMw/viewform