[Eeglablist] Importing Brain Vision Analyser coordinates

[Andreas Widmann]

Hi Nikola,

> Seeing as Brain Vision is a very popular suite in EEG research, it might be good if EEGlab team would support their file format?
Possibly this is also a matter of perspective?: Seeing as MATLAB/EEGLAB is a very popular suite in EEG research, it might be good if Brain Vision would support their file format (e.g., instead of creating yet another file format or relying on community support)? 

Anyway, this is xml and the MATLAB reference implementation works with some adjustments. Locations are in BESA orientation. Find a new loadbvef function to import the file into an EEGLAB chanlocs structure here: https://github.com/widmann/bva-io/blob/master/loadbvef.m

Hope this helps! Best,
Andreas

P.S.: Note that there’s a duplicate FFT9h channel in your location file.

> On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 6:53 PM, Stephen Politzer-Ahles <stephen.politzer-ahles at ling-phil.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi Nikola,
> 
> Since your channels have standard 10-20 names (e.g. "F7", "Cz", etc.), then you might not need to import the locations; in the EEGLAB GUI, after you import a .vhdr file, if you then go to Edit > Channel Locations, you should be automatically prompted to use channel locations from  BESA template (from the dipfit plugin, I think), which fills in the standard locations based on the channel names. In my experience these locations are accurate if my Brain Vision workspace used the standard filenames; so if that solves your issue, then you might not need to import the bva file.
> 
> If you still need to read the locations from a file, that might be tricky; I remember I had the same problem (but this was several years ago so I don't know if EEGLAB has changed since then in this regard). I believe (if I'm remembering correctly) what I did at the time was read the .vhdr file into Fieldtrip, and then use that to export the channel locations as an .sfp file, which then EEGLAB was able to read. Since that was a while ago, there may well be a more straightforward way now.
> 
> Best,
> Steve
> 
> 
> 
> ---
> Stephen Politzer-Ahles
> University of Oxford
> Language and Brain Lab, Faculty of Linguistics, Phonetics & Philology
> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~cpgl0080/
> 
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 1:06 PM, Nikola Vukovic <vukovicnikola at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear EEGlab community,
> 
> Has anyone managed to import Brain Vision Analyser channel locations into eeglab? I have not been able to do so successfully. Here is a sample channel file: http://jmp.sh/Y5s7HBt
> As far as I know, BVA should save the locations in simple Radius Theta Phi format.
> Is there a way to make EEGlab support this file type?
> 
> Many thanks,
> Nikola
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Eeglablist page: http://sccn.ucsd.edu/eeglab/eeglabmail.html
> To unsubscribe, send an empty email to eeglablist-unsubscribe at sccn.ucsd.edu
> For digest mode, send an email with the subject "set digest mime" to eeglablist-request at sccn.ucsd.edu
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Eeglablist page: http://sccn.ucsd.edu/eeglab/eeglabmail.html
> To unsubscribe, send an empty email to eeglablist-unsubscribe at sccn.ucsd.edu
> For digest mode, send an email with the subject "set digest mime" to eeglablist-request at sccn.ucsd.edu