Dear Biomag Community,

We need your help!  We have established a web-portal (it 
has been updated) for distributing realistic simulated 
data, as well as empirical data, for the sole purpose of 
providing the MEG community with common datasets with 
which groups can test their MEG algorithms 
(http://cobre.mrn.org/megsim/). Many of you have helped us 
before (2007) by sending us letters/email indicating a 
need for such an MEG portal which we sent along with our 
R21 NIH grant application (a small exploratory grant good 
for 2 years). We eventually received the grant and now we 
wish to turn it into a larger grant funded by NIH, 
expanding our simulations to include EEG. The reviewer 
comments from the first submission centered on the 
question of whether anyone would use the simulated 
datasets generated. A secondary concern was that our 
simulated data sets were out of date. I am hoping that we 
can open communication channels between our MEG/EEG 
community members and discuss what is needed most by the 
community so that we can deliver something that most 
members would be happy to use.

I am enclosing our “in press” article outlining the 
web-portal which shows examples of many of the datasets 
and first pass results for immediate benchmark 
comparisons. This article was intended to mark the 
official opening of our web portal.

Based on the reviewers concerns, we have some specific 
brief questions we hope you will take a couple of minutes 
to answer:
1. Is there a community need for these shared datasets?
2. Is it helpful to have basic sensory simulations 
(visual, auditory, somatosensory), in addition to more 
complex simulations? These datasets represent easier cases 
to analyze in most situations.
3. Is it helpful to construct realistic simulated data 
reflecting functional connectivity which would include 
unique single-trials and continuous data?
3. Is it useful to have overall analyses conducted on the 
outcome of different algorithms so we can directly compare 
performance across algorithms?
4. Is it useful to construct a large empirical cognitive 
dataset (n=25), emphasizing functional connectivity, that 
includes DTI, neuropsychological test measures, task 
performance measures, to share with the community (for 
exploratory connectivity analyses)?
5. Should we develop an external committee to help set 
guidelines for the creation of datasets and maintenance of 
the web-portal?
6. If a simulation for your project was available, would 
you use it rather than generating your own simulations 
(assuming that the data format was compatible with your 
software?
7. What other needs do you envision for the success of a 
community web-portal containing simulated and empirical 
datasets?

We are planning on submitting a revised grant application 
around Dec 1 2011. If you would like to help us please 
send a letter to me at the address below (or attach a 
letter to email—one reviewer didn’t appreciate 1- or 2- 
line sentences sent via email). I am sending this to the 
Biomag list. If there are others who should receive it, 
but are not on the Biomag list, please forward this 
message to them.  Thank you!

Sincerely,

Cheryl J. Aine, PhD
Professor, Department of Radiology
MSC10 5530
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
505 272-5557