Abstract
Collecting physiological data during fMRI experiments can improve fMRI data cleaning and contribute to our understanding of psychophysiological processes; however, these recordings are frequently fraught with artifacts from the MRI pulse sequence. Here, we assess data from BIOPAC Systems, Inc., one of the more widely-used manufacturers of physiological monitoring equipment, and evaluate their recommendations for filtering such artifacts from electrocardiogram and electrodermal activity data collected during single-band, single-echo fMRI sequences and extend these recommendations to address artifacts associated with multiband, multi-echo fMRI sequences. While the magnitude and frequencies of artifacts differ with these aspects of pulse sequences, their effects can be mitigated via application of digital filters incorporating slice collection, multiband factor, and repetition time. The implementation of these filters is provided both in interactive online notebooks and an open source denoising tool.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
In light of reviewer comments, we identified bugs in our code that calculated SNR and have removed it from the manuscript. Further, there are four outliers from consecutive runs in one session from one participant that were affecting kurtosis calculations following filtering. Signal quality assessments have been recalculated after removing those outliers, and added to Table 2, so that readers can see both the complete data and the influence of those outliers.