fMRIPrep Output QualityCheck (QC) - timescale issue for some tasks&participants

Summary of what happened:

I’m using fMRIPrep 23.2.1 to preprocess my fMRI data. I follow the same steps for all participants (N = 36). When looking at the .html outputs and doing my Quality Check, I noticed 2 participants have overlapping timestamps on the carpetplot for 1-2 tasks (see screenshots below, where I’ve added a yellow rectangle around the overlapping values). Any idea what could be causing this? I’m re-running the preprocessing again for one participant to see if the error persists.

Command used (and if a helper script was used, a link to the helper script or the command generated):

PASTE CODE HERE

Version:

23.2.1

Environment (Docker, Singularity / Apptainer, custom installation):

I preprocessed using Docker and Neurodesk (fMRIPrep 23.2.1)

Data formatted according to a validatable standard? Please provide the output of the validator:

Yes

PASTE VALIDATOR OUTPUT HERE

Relevant log outputs (up to 20 lines):

PASTE LOG OUTPUT HERE

Screenshots / relevant information:


Hi @cspelman does this error persist on the most recent version?
Best,
Steven

Hi @Steven. I re-ran preprocessing for this participant using the most recent version of fMRI prep. The previous .html output showed this overlapping timestamp for two out of the seven tasks. Re-running on the most recent version fixed the overlapping timestamps for those two tasks; however, now a different task has overlapping timestamps on the carpetplot.

Hi @cspelman,

What if you run with --reports-only flag on that subject to remake the report?

Best,
Steven

@Steven I added --reports-only to my script and re-ran it, but it didn’t appear to change the .HTML output or fix the issue. Note: it did seem to replace the .HTML output, evident by an updated “date modified” timestamp for the file.

I want to ensure I am running this correctly - can you clarify where I should expect the new report to appear? Do I need to delete/move the previous .HTML output (or any other files) to run this successfully? Thank you for your suggestions!

Hi @cspelman,

I suppose you can try to move the old html somewhere temporary and try again, but it might not make a difference, perhaps because the picture used in the report isn’t regenerated when running it. Since this appears to be a bug in the plotting software and not user error, I would make an issue on the fmriprep github repo so the developers can be made aware of it.

Best,
Steven