Processing, evaluating and understanding FMRI data with afni_proc.py

TL;DR

afni_proc.py is a flexible, transparent, and automated tool for processing FMRI data, enhancing understanding, reproducibility, and quality control throughout the analysis pipeline.

Contribution

This paper introduces afni_proc.py, a comprehensive tool that streamlines FMRI data processing with detailed control, automatic checks, and thorough documentation for improved transparency.

Findings

Provides detailed processing scripts with comments

Includes automatic self-checks for potential issues

Generates interactive quality control reports

Abstract

FMRI data are noisy, complicated to acquire, and typically go through many steps of processing before they are used in a study or clinical practice. Being able to visualize and understand the data from the start through the completion of processing, while being confident that each intermediate step was successful, is challenging. AFNI's afni_proc$.$py is a tool to create and run a processing pipeline for FMRI data. With its flexible features, afni_proc$.$py allows users to both control and evaluate their processing at a detailed level. It has been designed to keep users informed about all processing steps: it does not just process the data, but first outputs a fully commented processing script that the users can read, query, interpret and refer back to. Having this full provenance is important for being able to understand each step of processing; it also promotes transparency and reproducibility by keeping the record of individual-level processing and modeling specifics in a single, shareable place. Additionally, afni_proc$.$py creates pipelines that contain several automatic self-checks for potential problems during runtime. The output directory contains a dictionary of relevant quantities that can be programmatically queried for potential issues and a systematic, interactive quality control (QC) HTML. All of these features help users evaluate and understand their data and processing in detail. We describe these and other aspects of afni_proc$.$py here using a set of task-based and resting state FMRI example commands.