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bids-standard / bids-2-devel

Discussions and suggestions of backwards incompatible changes to BIDS
https://bids.neuroimaging.io/
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"IntendedFor" field in electrophysiology sidecars should bear a different name #51

Closed hoechenberger closed 2 years ago

hoechenberger commented 2 years ago

Hello,

the JSON sidecar file of electrophysiological recordings has the optional parameter IntendedFor. Its value is "intended" (no pun … intended! 🙈) to point to structural images, e.g. MRI or CT scans. However, the parameter name is as ambiguous as can be, and IMHO sparks incorrect associations, at least for me: if my electrophysiological recording is "intended for" a certain structural scan, then this implies that the "main" bit of the data is in the structural scan, not in the electrophysiological data. I don't think this sort of hierarchical implication makes much sense here.

Considering that MEG data comes with the optional field AssociatedEmptyRoom, I was wondering if IntendedFor couldn't be renamed to something like, AssociatedAnatomy or AssociatedAnatomicalScan (or the plural forms thereof)?

sappelhoff commented 2 years ago

Hi Richard, I see where your concerns are coming from. I think this is another case where IntendedFor was an existing field for MRI data that has then been adopted first by MEG, and subsequently by EEG and iEEG (and now more and more modalities) to mean something slightly different.

There are most likely names that ore clearly express the intent of this metadata, but I feel like this is a BIDS 2.0 discussion, so unless I get heavy objections, I'll transfer this issue to https://github.com/bids-standard/bids-2-devel in a few days/weeks (also depending on how much traffic this issue will experience here; I'll keep it here if lots of people are interested).

One more note: The IntendedFor field is part of the *_coordsystem.json file, so one could argue that "electrode/sensor locations are "intended to be used" (IntendedFor) together with an anatomical scan. So while the naming situation could be better, it's not a catastrophe IMHO. :)

hoechenberger commented 2 years ago

Thanks for the explanation, @sappelhoff! I agree with everything you said.