Source: https://github.com/aipoch/medical-research-skills

When to Use

Use this skill when you need to:

1. Run end-to-end ECG/PPG pipelines (cleaning → peak detection → feature extraction) for cardiovascular monitoring and HRV.
2. Compute HRV metrics (time/frequency/nonlinear) for autonomic nervous system assessment in resting-state or continuous recordings.
3. Analyze EEG for band power, microstates, and complexity measures in cognitive/neuroscience experiments.
4. Decompose EDA into tonic/phasic components and quantify SCRs for arousal/stress and psychophysiological paradigms.
5. Perform multimodal biosignal processing (e.g., ECG + RSP + EDA + EMG) with unified outputs for integrated analyses.

Reference docs (if available in this skill package): references/ecg_cardiac.md, references/hrv.md, references/eeg.md, references/eda.md, references/rsp.md, references/emg.md, references/eog.md, references/signal_processing.md, references/complexity.md, references/epochs_events.md, references/bio_module.md.

Key Features

• Cardiac (ECG/PPG): cleaning, R-peak detection, delineation, quality assessment, ECG-derived respiration, pulse analysis.
• HRV: comprehensive indices across time, frequency, and nonlinear domains; RSA and advanced metrics (e.g., RQA where applicable).
• EEG: band power, channel utilities, microstate segmentation, and integration patterns commonly used with MNE workflows.
• EDA: tonic/phasic decomposition, SCR detection, sympathetic indices, and event-related EDA analysis.
• Respiration (RSP): breathing rate, variability (RRV), and respiratory volume per time (RVT) style features.
• EMG/EOG: EMG activation/amplitude processing; EOG blink and eye-movement feature extraction.
• General utilities: filtering, peak finding, PSD estimation, resampling/interpolation, and synchronization helpers.
• Event-related analysis: event finding, epoching, baseline correction, and averaging across trials.
• Multimodal integration: bio_process() / bio_analyze() for consistent multi-signal pipelines.

Dependencies

• neurokit2 (latest; install via pip/uv)
• Python 3.x environment (version depends on your runtime)

Installation:

uv pip install neurokit2

Development version:

uv pip install https://github.com/neuropsychology/NeuroKit/zipball/dev

Example Usage

A complete, runnable example that simulates signals, processes them, computes features, and performs event-related epoching:

import neurokit2 as nk
import numpy as np

# -----------------------------
# 1) Simulate example signals
# -----------------------------
sampling_rate = 1000
duration = 60  # seconds

ecg = nk.ecg_simulate(duration=duration, sampling_rate=sampling_rate, heart_rate=70)
rsp = nk.rsp_simulate(duration=duration, sampling_rate=sampling_rate, respiratory_rate=15)
eda = nk.eda_simulate(duration=duration, sampling_rate=sampling_rate, scr_number=8)

# Create a simple trigger channel with 5 events
trigger = np.zeros(len(ecg))
event_times_s = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50]
for t in event_times_s:
    trigger[int(t * sampling_rate)] = 1.0

# -----------------------------
# 2) ECG processing + HRV
# -----------------------------
ecg_signals, ecg_info = nk.ecg_process(ecg, sampling_rate=sampling_rate)
rpeaks = ecg_info["ECG_R_Peaks"]
hrv = nk.hrv(rpeaks, sampling_rate=sampling_rate)

# -----------------------------
# 3) Multimodal processing
# -----------------------------
bio_signals, bio_info = nk.bio_process(
    ecg=ecg,
    rsp=rsp,
    eda=eda,
    sampling_rate=sampling_rate
)
bio_results = nk.bio_analyze(bio_signals, sampling_rate=sampling_rate)

# -----------------------------
# 4) Event-related epoching
# -----------------------------
events = nk.events_find(trigger, threshold=0.5)
epochs = nk.epochs_create(
    bio_signals,
    events,
    sampling_rate=sampling_rate,
    epochs_start=-0.5,
    epochs_end=2.0
)
grand_average = nk.epochs_average(epochs)

# -----------------------------
# 5) Minimal outputs
# -----------------------------
print("HRV (first columns):")
print(hrv.iloc[:, :8].round(3))

print("\nBio analysis keys:", list(bio_results.keys())[:10])
print("Grand average shape:", grand_average.shape)

Implementation Details

Processing pipelines (typical pattern)

Most modalities follow a consistent structure:

1. *_process(signal, sampling_rate=...) Produces a cleaned signal plus intermediate channels (e.g., peaks, phases) and an info dict with indices/metadata.
2. *_analyze(processed_signals, sampling_rate=...) Computes summary features and automatically selects an analysis mode based on recording length.

Examples:

• ECG: ecg_process() → ecg_analyze() → hrv()
• EDA: eda_process() → eda_analyze()
• RSP: rsp_process() → rsp_rrv() / rsp_rvt()

Analysis mode selection (event-related vs interval-related)

Many *_analyze() functions implicitly switch modes based on data duration:

• Event-related (short segments; commonly < ~10 s): stimulus-locked responses, epoch-based summaries.
• Interval-related (longer recordings; commonly ≥ ~10 s): continuous/resting summaries (e.g., HRV over a window).

If you need explicit event-related workflows, use:

• events_find() to detect markers
• epochs_create() to segment around events
• epochs_average() (and modality-specific *_eventrelated() where applicable)

HRV domains and inputs

HRV functions typically require R-peak indices (sample positions) and often a sampling_rate:

• Time-domain: e.g., SDNN, RMSSD, pNN50
• Frequency-domain: band powers/ratios (requires sampling rate and appropriate interpolation assumptions)
• Nonlinear: Poincaré (SD1/SD2), entropy/fractal-style measures

Common calls:

• nk.hrv(peaks, sampling_rate=...) (all-in-one)
• nk.hrv_time(peaks), nk.hrv_frequency(peaks, sampling_rate=...), nk.hrv_nonlinear(peaks, sampling_rate=...)

Filtering and spectral estimation

General utilities (see references/signal_processing.md) typically expose parameters such as:

• sampling_rate
• cutoff frequencies (lowcut, highcut)
• method-specific options (e.g., filter order/type)

Example:

filtered = nk.signal_filter(x, sampling_rate=1000, lowcut=0.5, highcut=40)
psd = nk.signal_psd(filtered, sampling_rate=1000)

Complexity/entropy measures

Complexity functions (see references/complexity.md) provide:

• Entropy families (approximate, sample, permutation, multiscale, etc.)
• Fractal/DFA variants
• Nonlinear dynamics metrics (e.g., Lyapunov-style measures where supported)

Example:

indices = nk.complexity(x, sampling_rate=1000)
apen = nk.entropy_approximate(x)
dfa = nk.fractal_dfa(x)