Finding Landmarks in the Functional Brain: Detection and Use for Group Characterization

Abstract. FMRI group studies are usually based on stereotactic spatial normalization and present voxel by voxel average activity across subjects. This technique does not in general adequately model the inter subject spatial variability. In this work, we propose to identify functional landmarks that are reliable across subjects with subject specific Talairach coordinates that are similar -but not exactly identical- between subjects. We call these Brain Functional Landmarks (BFLs), and define them based on cross-validation techniques using 38 subjects. We explore a dataset acquired while subjects were involved in several cognitive and sensori-motor processes, and show that this representation allows to classify subjects into sub-groups on the basis of their BFL activity.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: MICCAI
• Authors: Bertrand Thirion, Philippe Pinel, Jean-Baptiste Poline
• Keywords: Medical Imaging, MICCAI 2005, Stereotactic Spatial Normalization, Subject Spatial Variability, Voxel Average Activity