Adjusting the neuroimaging statistical inferences for nonstationarity

Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv. 2009;12(Pt 1):992-9. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-04268-3_122.

Abstract

In neuroimaging cluster-based inference has generally been found to be more powerful than voxel-wise inference. However standard cluster-based methods assume stationarity (constant smoothness), while under nonstationarity clusters are larger in smooth regions just by chance, making false positive risk spatially variant. Hayasaka et al. proposed a Random Field Theory (RFT) based nonstationarity adjustment for cluster inference and validated the method in terms of controlling the overall family-wise false positive rate. The RFT-based methods, however, have never been directly assessed in terms of homogeneity of local false positive risk. In this work we propose a new cluster size adjustment that accounts for local smoothness, based on local empirical cluster size distributions and a two-pass permutation method. We also propose a new approach to measure homogeneity of local false positive risk, and use this method to compare the RFT-based and our new empirical adjustment methods. We apply these techniques to both cluster-based and a related inference, threshold-free cluster enhancement (TFCE). Using simulated and real data we confirm the expected heterogeneity in false positive risk with unadjusted cluster inference but find that RFT-based adjustment does not fully eliminate heterogeneity; we also observe that our proposed empirical adjustment dramatically increases the homogeneity and TFCE inference is generally quite robust to nonstationarity.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Brain / physiology*
  • Brain Mapping / methods*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Data Interpretation, Statistical*
  • Humans
  • Image Enhancement / methods
  • Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods*
  • Models, Neurological
  • Models, Statistical
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Stochastic Processes