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Subsections


4.5 Computational Issues

As mentioned previously, a typical fMRI data set might be about $ 1\,$GB in size and would take less than $ 15\,$minutes to collect. Four or more such data sets may be collected in a single experimental session with a single subject. An entire experiment might include $ 20$ or more subjects, and each subject might be tested twice or more. Thus there would be $ 160$ $ 1\,$GB datasets to be analyzed. (We are currently running an experiment with $ 300\,$subjects and each will be tested at least twice; one has already been tested four times.)

With such large amounts of data, storage and analysis becomes an important issue. Standard analysis of the data can take many hours, and an organized storage system is recommended. Our recent experience is that we can process the data at the rate of $ 2$- $ 3\,$MB per minute which implies that the entire experiment just described would require on the order of $ 1000\,$hours of processing time.

Several packages are available for analysis of fMRI data. A few of these will be discussed in the following section. An important point to mention before discussing these packages is that users of fMRI software should spend some time getting to know and understand the package they are using before carrying out their data processing. Questions that are important to consider, for example, may be the following. Are bias and variance in the data corrected as a routine part of data processing? If motion correction is carried out, how is this implemented? Is any additional error being introduced into the data as a result of this routine processing? What kind of modeling and comparisons of the data are being carried out, and what sort of thresholding is applied? We feel that these issues should be understood before drawing conclusions about the fMRI data, as variations in the processing and analysis may lead to variations in the results of the study.

4.5.1 Software Packages for fMRI Data Analysis

The large degree of complexity of fMRI data necessitates the use of pre-packaged software tools (unless, of course, one is an extremely ambitious programmer). Several packaged tools are described briefly below. Each software package has its benefits and limitations; we do not provide a detailed comparison here. We will focus a bit more on FIASCO, as we are part of the team that has developed and maintained this package; it is in wide use and we describe several of its unique tools.

One such software program for fMRI data processing is AFNI (Analysis of Functional NeuroImages). This software was developed by Robert Cox, formerly of the Medical College of Wisconsin, now at the National Institutes of Health; it is a free to all users. The software consists of a set of C programs for processing, analyzing, and displaying fMRI data. Currently, AFNI will run on most operating systems excluding Windows-based platforms. The program is interactive, and several of its benefits include its ability to read and switch between several different data formats, 3D viewing of data, the ability to transform data into Talairach coordinates, interactive thresholding of functional overlays onto structural images, and finally, a new feature entitled SUMA (Surface Mapping with AFNI) that adds the ability to perform cortical surface based functional imaging analysis using AFNI. The homepage for AFNI is located at http://afni.nimh.nih.gov/afni/.

Brain Voyager is a commercially available tool developed by Brain Innovation that can analyze and visualize both functional and structural MRI datasets. Brain Voyager can run on all major computer platforms including all current versions of Windows, as well as Linux/Unix and Macintosh systems. A user-interface is provided, and the program boasts several up-to-date features such as the ability to perform thresholding using the FDR technique, the ability to perform automatic brain segmentation, brain surface reconstruction, and cortex inflation and flattening, and the ability to analyze and integrate diffusion tensor imaging data with other data types. More information about this product can be found at http://www.brainvoyager.com/.

The Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) software package is a suite of programs, originally developed by Karl Friston, to analyze SPECT/PET and fMRI data using a voxel-based approach. The SPM program is also free but requires Matlab, a licensed Mathworks product, to run. Typical analysis steps performed by SPM include spatial normalization and smoothing of the images, parametric statistical modeling at each voxel through the use of a general linear model, and assessment of the computed statistical images. New functionality of SPM (released in SPM2) can take into account more complex issues in fMRI research such as non-sphericity, which does not restrict the user to the assumption of identically and independently distributed errors in the selected data models. For more details about this and other SPM specifics, the reader should refer to http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/.

The VoxBo package advertises itself as ''the software behind the brains''. The VoxBo software is free and was developed at the University of Pennsylvania through funding from NIDA and NIMH via a Human Brain Project/Neuroinformatics grant. A Unix-based platform is currently required to run VoxBo, and a unique feature of this software includes a job scheduling system for organizational purposes. Benefits of VoxBo also include the ability carry out several data pre-processing steps such as three dimensional motion correction as well as the ability to manipulate and model the data in its time-series form. A web page is available at http://www.voxbo.org/.

A group including the current authors developed an fMRI analysis package named FIASCO. This is a collection of software tools written primarily in C, designed to analyze fMRI data using a series of processing steps. Originally, FIASCO's main purpose was to read the raw fMRI data, process it in a series of steps to reduce sources of systematic error in the data, carry out statistical analysis, and create final brain maps showing regions of neural activation. While users still run their fMRI data through the standard FIASCO pipeline, FIASCO has expanded into a complex set of software tools in order to accommodate many other issues and problems that have come up during the past decade as the field of fMRI has grown.

One unique feature of FIASCO is that several of the data-processing steps for the purpose of reducing bias and noise are carried out in k-space. As mentioned previously, k-space is essentially a frequency space and is the domain in which the raw data is collected. Carrying out data correction in k-space can be beneficial for many reasons. For example, certain types of noise in the data (such as Nyquist ghosts, phase drifts, and physiological noise) can be more accurately modeled and removed in k-space than in image space ([37]). Also, images can be resampled in k-space without the need for interpolation or smoothing, both of which can introduce additional problems into the images ([10]).

If users elect to the use the typical FIASCO pipeline for fMRI data analysis, tools that implement k-space correction are first carried out prior to performing the Fourier Transform. Both EPI and spiral data can be analyzed, and since both have different types of noise, unique pipelines are used for each. For example, typical FIASCO steps for processing EPI data include baseline correction (aka. correction of DC shift), removal of Nyquist ghosts, motion correction, physiological noise correction, removal of outliers and removal of unexplained data trends. All of these correction steps with the exception of the last two are carried out in k-space. The final steps are to perform statistical analysis and create brain maps showing the activated areas. Users can elect to skip any of the steps of the FIASCO process. And, they have the opportunity to add their own unique steps to the process.

As the field of fMRI grows, so does the desire to be able to perform more complex analysis procedures on the data. The FIASCO programmers have accommodated these needs with the creation of several unique general purpose tools. For example, certain tools allow the user to easily manipulate fMRI data sets by cutting, pasting, permuting, or sorting the data. More complex general purpose tools include an rpn-math feature with built-in functions; this is essentially a calculator which allows the user to perform arithmetic calculations using Reverse Polish Notation looping over all the voxels in a data set. Another tool allows users to perform matrix multiplication on fMRI data sets, and a third tool can compute eigenvalues and eigenvectors of real symmetric matrices.

In addition to general purpose tools, FIASCO also has many special purpose tools that can perform very specific tasks in relation to the fMRI data. Some of these include tools that can convert between different data formats, tools that perform specific noise reduction steps, and tools that can compute summary statistics or perform different types of hypothesis tests on the data. A complete list of FIASCO's tools can be found on the web page at http://www.stat.cmu.edu$ /\!\sim$fiasco.

The features and tools of FIASCO have allowed its users to manipulate and experiment with fMRI data sets in unique and interesting ways. Recently, FIASCO has been applied to many other kinds of data: genetic microarrays, protein gels, video, PET, CT, etc.

4.5.2 Other Computational Issues

Aside from fMRI analysis software, other types of useful computational packages in fMRI may include software that allows the researcher to easily design and implement a desired experimental tasks for subjects to carry out while in the MRI scanner. For example, an fMRI study may focus on activation patterns during a short-term memory task. Thus an experiment engaging short-term memory would need to be carefully designed and projected into the small space of the MRI machine. The scientist would also need some sort of feedback from the subject to ensure that the task was being performed properly.


next up previous contents index
Next: 4.6 Conclusions Up: 4. Functional Magnetic Resonance Previous: 4.4 Modeling and Analysis