Best Practices for Collecting Physiological Data¶

This document is a work in progress. Currently, an outline of important topics is presented.

Why collect physiological data?¶

Physiological fluctuations can be treated as noise in fMRI data or as signals of interest to characterize different physiological states
Add regressors in the modeling of fMRI data to explain signal variance
- Especially cardiac and respiratory effects as they can influence in the BOLD signal
Cardiac pulsatility and breathing related chest/abdomen movement –> RETROICOR
Monitor subject/patient during the scan (important during first-time scans, or breathing tasks)

CO2& O2: specifically end-tidal pressures of CO2 and O2, which approximate the arterial levels of these gases
Cardiac pulsation: heart rate trace
Respiration: change in chest volume

CO2 & O2: nasal cannula or face mask with gas analyzers, RespirAct (more specifically if you want to modulate end-tidal values)
Pulse: photo-plethysmograph, pulse oximeter
Respiration: respiratory belt, respiratory chest bellows

Use phys2bids to organize the data
Can also plot each channel from LabChart file the quickly view which kind of physiological data each channel represents
Use a peak detection algorithm to get end-tidal CO2 trace for breathing task BOLD fMRI and convolve with HRF
Use a peak detection algorithm to get HR trace and convolve with CRF
Use a peak detection algorithm to get respiratory trace and convolve with RRF
- Perform RETROICOR on the cardiac and respiratory cycles to include in the GLM as regressors