Step 1 — Plan Your Acquisition¶

Clearly define what data will be acquired before you proceed to sequence setup.

Sequences¶

Specify every type of sequence you will obtain — this includes functional, anatomical, and diffusion sequences.

Sessions¶

If data will be acquired across multiple sessions, define which sequences will take place during which session.

BIDS definition of a session

Although a session is often understood as one visit to the scanner, in BIDS a session is defined by which data is acquired (see definition 5 by BIDS). A session with an identical label must always contain the same data across participants, even when acquired in a different order. If not all data is collected for all participants this is permitted. Dates and times at which different sessions were recorded will be added to the BIDS dataset at a later step to allow for longitudinal analysis.

Multiple runs¶

If multiple instances of the same sequence will take place — for example, multiple functional runs with the same parameters and duration — define how many there will be and how they will be distributed across sessions.

Task-based data¶

If you are acquiring task-based data, BIDS event files are required. See our guide on task experiment data for instructions on how to set up your experiment to output BIDS event files.

Before you continue¶

Make sure you can answer yes to all of the following before moving to step 2:

All sequence types are defined
Session structure is decided (single or multiple sessions, what goes in each)
Number of runs per sequence is defined
Task event files are planned (if acquiring task-based data)