Abstract #2067
Vascular Autocalibration of fMRI (VasA fMRI) Improves Sensitivity of Population Studies
Samira M Kazan 1 , Siawoosh Mohammadi 1 , Martina F Callaghan 1 , Guillaume Flandin 1 , Robert Leech 2 , Aneurin Kennerley 3 , Christian Windischberger 4 , and Nikolaus Weiskopf 1
1
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL
Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom,
2
Cognitive,
Clinical and Computational Neuroimaging Lab, University
of London, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom,
3
Department
of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield,
United Kingdom,
4
MR
Centre of Excellence, Centre for Medical Physics and
Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna,
Vienna, Austria
Functional MRI group studies play a central role in
basic and clinical neuroscience, but without large group
sizes their statistical powers are rather low, mainly
due to high inter-subject variance. We present a novel
auto-calibration method, termed VasA fMRI, which
significantly reduces variation and increases
statistical power by accounting for vascularization
differences between subjects. Sensitivity increases
exceeded 20% in different brain areas, which is
comparable to the gain achieved by a 40% increase in
group size or by going from 1.5T to 3T. VasA fMRI does
not require additional reference scans and can be
applied to any task-related fMRI dataset. It facilitates
investigation of subtle effects, the use of smaller
groups and revisiting previous studies that were
statistically underpowered.
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