Exporting Data
This reference guide describes how to export EEGLAB data.
Table of contents
Supported Data Formats
The following export formats are supported:
- EEG Data: ASCII Text, .txt, .csv
- EEG Data: European Data Format (16-bit), .edf
- EEG Data: Biosemi, .bdf
- EEG Data: BIOSIG, .gdf
- EEG Data: Brain Vision Analyzer, .dat, .vhdr, .vmrk
- EEG Data: MFF EGI format, .mff
- EEG Data: Neuroscan .cnt (beta)
- ICA Activity: ASCII Text, .txt
- Weight Matrix : ASCII Text, .txt
- Inverse Weight Matrix: ASCII Text, .txt
- Find More information regarding possible supported data formats in the BIOSIG documentation.
Exporting data and ICA matrices
Exporting data to an ASCII text file
EEGLAB datasets can be exported as ASCII files using the menu item File → Exports → Data and ICA activity to text file. Enter a file name (mydata.txt, for instance). Check the second checkbox to export the average ERP instead of the data epochs. By default, the electrode labels are saved for each row (4th check box), and the time values are saved for each column (5th checkbox). Time units can be specified in the edit box closest to the time values checkbox. Finally, check the third checkbox to transpose the matrix before saving.
The file written to disk may look like this:
FPz EOG1 F3 Fz F4 EOG2 FC5 FC1 ...
-1000.0000 -1.1091 2.0509 0.1600 -0.1632 -0.4848 -1.3799 -0.0254 -0.4788 ...
-992.1880 0.6599 1.7894 0.3616 0.6354 0.8656 -2.9291 -0.0486 -0.4564 ...
-984.3761 1.8912 1.3653 -0.6887 -0.0437 0.2176 -0.9767 -0.6973 -1.5856 ...
-976.5641 0.5129 -0.5399 -1.4076 -1.2616 -0.8667 -3.5189 -1.5411 -1.9671 ...
-968.7521 -0.0322 -0.4172 -0.9411 -0.6027 -0.9955 -2.3535 -1.6068 -1.0640 ...
-960.9402 0.1491 0.0898 -0.0828 0.3378 0.0312 -2.4982 -0.9694 -0.0787 ...
-953.1282 -1.9682 -1.5161 -1.2022 -0.8192 -1.1344 -3.3198 -1.6298 -0.9119 ...
-945.3162 -3.7540 -2.1106 -2.6597 -2.4203 -2.2365 -3.5267 -1.9910 -2.7470 ...
-937.5043 -2.4367 -0.1690 -0.9962 -1.7021 -2.8847 -2.1883 -0.2790 -1.5198 ...
-929.6923 -2.8487 -0.3114 -1.6495 -2.6636 -4.0906 -1.7708 -1.2317 -2.3702 ...
-921.8803 -2.8535 0.1097 -1.5272 -2.0674 -3.8161 -3.1058 -0.8083 -1.5088 ...
-914.0684 -3.9531 -0.4527 -1.8168 -2.2164 -3.4805 -2.1490 -1.0269 -1.3791 ...
-906.2564 -3.9945 -0.1054 -1.8921 -2.8029 -3.5642 -3.4692 -1.1435 -2.2091 ...
-898.4444 -4.4166 -0.8894 -3.3775 -3.8089 -3.8068 -1.7808 2.5074 -3.5267 ...
-890.6325 -3.0948 0.5812 -2.5386 -1.7772 -1.8601 -2.8900 -2.0421 -2.0238 ...
-882.8205 -3.1907 0.7619 -3.6440 -2.1976 -1.4996 -0.6483 -3.4281 -2.7645 ...
-875.0085 -1.7072 2.5182 -3.2136 -2.4219 -1.3372 -1.5834 -2.9586 -2.8805 ...
-867.1966 -1.8022 1.7044 -2.6813 -3.2165 -2.7036 0.0279 -2.5038 -3.4211 ...
-859.3846 -3.1016 -0.1176 -3.6396 -4.3637 -3.9712 -3.5499 -3.4217 -4.5840 ...
-851.5726 -1.7027 0.7413 -3.3635 -3.8541 -3.5940 -1.3157 -2.9060 -3.8355 ...
-843.7607 -0.2382 0.5779 -1.9576 -2.6630 -1.8187 -1.1834 -1.4307 -2.4980 ...
-835.9487 0.7006 0.4125 -0.4827 -1.7712 -2.0397 0.2534 0.2594 -1.2367 ...
-828.1367 -0.2056 -0.3509 0.4829 -0.6850 -1.1222 0.0394 1.4929 0.7069 ...
-820.3248 0.3797 -0.3791 0.9267 0.2139 -0.6116 -0.7612 1.3307 1.5108 ...
-812.5128 -0.8168 -1.4683 -0.3252 -0.8263 -1.5868 -0.7416 -0.2708 -0.1987 ...
-804.7009 -0.7432 -0.3581 -0.9168 -0.8350 -1.7733 -0.4928 -0.7747 -0.6256 ...
...
The first column contains the time axis and the other the data for each electrode. This file might, for example, be imported into SPSS or BMDP.
Exporting EEG data in binary formats
You may use different EEGLAB menu items to exporting to different EEG formats.
-
EEG Data: European Data Format (16-bit) .edf, Biosemi .bdf, and BIOSIG .gdf formats. Use the File → Exports → Data to EDF/BDF/GDF file menu item. This requires BIOSIG to be installed (you will be prompted to install BIOSIG if it is not installed).
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EEG Data: Brain Vision Analyzer, .dat, .vhdr, .vmrk. Use the File → Exports → Write Brain Vis. Exchange format file menu item. This requires the bva-io plugin to be installed.
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EEG Data: MFF EGI format, .mff. Use the File → Exports → EGI .mff file menu item. This requires the mffMatlabIO plugin to be installed.
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EEG Data: Neuroscan .cnt (beta). This can be done from the command line using the writecnt.m function. This requires the neuroscanio plugin to be installed.
Exporting data as BIDS
Refer to the bids-matlab-io EEGLAB plugin tutorial for exporting EEGLAB studies as BIDS (Brain Imaging Data Structure) archives.
Exporting ICA weights and inverse weight matrices
Use menu item File → Export→ Weight matrix to text file to export the ICA unmixing matrix (weights*sphere). Simply enter a file name in the pop-up window and press Save.
The text file on disk then contains the weight matrix. It may be re-imported into another EEGLAB dataset using menu item Edit → Dataset info. As shown below, enter the filename in the ICA weight array edit box. Leave the sphere edit box empty, or empty it if it is not empty. See the ICA decomposition tutorial for more details on sphere and weight matrices.
Exporting events
Event information can also be exported to a .txt file (a plain text file containing tab-separated values). This file can be opened with any text editor, OpenOffice Calc, or Microsoft Excel, for example.
You may import the tutorial data eeglab_data.set in the sample_data under EEGLAB. To export all events of the currently loaded EEG file, select the menu item File → Export → Events to text file. A dialog window pops up asking for the name and location of the .csv file. The first row of the file contains the names of the event fields. Note that there is an additional column “number”, which is not an event field.
If you want more control over export options, you should use the command-line version of the pop_expevents.m function. An alternative function, eeg_eventtable.m, has additional options for exporting events.
Exporting output and STUDY results
The scripting tutorial section describes solutions for exporting any results to a text or Excel file for subsequent processing in SPSS, Statistica, Stata, R, SAS, and Excel.