DRT: A new toolbox for the Standard EEG Data Structure in large-scale EEG applications

The current evolution of “open neuroscience” has led to an increased amount of research on large-scale electroencephalography (EEG) applications, resulting in large quantities of accumulated EEG data. The batch sharing and processing of these massive EEG data play an important role in EEG studies within or across laboratories and result in an increasing requirement for a standard data file structure for existing EEG data. In this work, a new and more flexible data structure, named the Standard EEG Data Structure (SEDS), was proposed to meet the needs of both small-scale EEG data batch processing in single-site studies and large-scale EEG data sharing and analysis in single-/multisite studies (especially on cloud platforms). Furthermore, two versions (MATLAB and Docker versions) of the EEG Datafile Restructuring Toolbox (DRT) were developed to restructure EEG data files according to the SEDS. The DRT GUI (MATLAB version) dramatically reduces the time required for novice researchers, while the DRT (Docker version) is more efficient for experienced researchers. All materials including SEDS documents, tools, example datasets, etc., are available on the WeBrain website (https://webrain.uestc.edu.cn/) and Wiki (https://github.com/WeCloudHub/DRT). We hope that these two user-friendly toolboxes can make the relatively novel SEDS easier to collaboratively study, especially for applications in large-scale EEG studies.