[Question][fNIRS] The use of .dat file

Dear MNE devs and users,

I’m not quite used to fNIRS nor the MNE package (started my internship last week) and I can’t figure out the use the *.dat file.

In your tutorial concerning the Preprocessing of fNIRS data, the function mne.io.read_raw_nirx(fnirs_raw_dir, verbose=True) (line 11 of the first box) requires a *.dat file to create a RawNIRX instance, although my tutor explained to me that *.dat are essentially files used to display data in real-time (i.e. during the experiment) and as such, are based on standard parameters : they’re not usable after the experiment because they do not contain useful (to be processed) data, since the probed data is stored in *.wl1 and *.wl1, events in *.evt and the metadata in *.hdr and *_probeInfo.mat.

I searched through the code and even though you do load the file, I can’t find where you use it (or if you use it all)? Am I missing something ?

Thanks in advance,

David

[cbrnr]

Based on this new information I totally agree. Once we get some NIRScout test files from both version 1 and 2 we should do a rewrite. I do not have access to a NIRScout device.

I have the files I’ve listed above. I will link them in #7905 once I get permission to share them. Also, my lab will soon have a NIRScout device, so I can provide all the NIRX info we need 😄.

I completely agree that supporting .nirs files should be very low priority and that .snirf is much more important. But I also think that an option to load the primary raw data directly (what we currently have) is the most important thing.

Let’s continue our discussion in #7905.

[rob-luke]

I’ve asked my coworkers about the NIRSport data, I’ll come back when I get some news.

Thanks @Swy7ch, no rush, we will get the dat file issue merged and then tackle the rest as it comes.