Sharon Chia-Ju Chen1, Chun-Chao Chuang2,
Mei_Ling Su2, Yu-Ting Kuo1, Keh-Shih Chuang2
1Department of Medical Imaging and
Radiological Sciences, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan,
Taiwan; 2Department of Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Sciences,
National Tsing-Hua University, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan, Taiwan
In
this study, we present a novel analytical method to detect brain activation
using spatial clustering. Spatial
clustering is determined by the correlation of each pixel with its nearest neighbors. Preliminary results show that the proposed
method has larger area under the ROC curve compared to the SPM (statistical
parametric mapping) and MTCA (modified temporal clustering analysis) methods
in the detection of activated regions using simulated data. This method can
detect activation area without prior information and regardless of the shape
of the response function. Keywords: fMRI, spatial clustering analysis,
spatial correlation