Meeting Banner
Abstract #0067

Advanced combinations of dual-echo fMRI data provide no advantages over the simple average at group-level analyses

Ádám Kettinger1,2, Christian Windischberger3, Christopher Hill4, and Zoltán Nagy4

1Department of Nuclear Techniques, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary, 2Brain Imaging Centre, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, 3Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 4Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Multi-echo EPI acquisitions are used in fMRI research due to their superior BOLD sensitivity. Several advanced methods of echo combinations have been proposed. We confirmed, using dual-echo data, that CNR weighting is the optimal combination on a single subject level. However, we have shown that these advantages do not carry over to a group analysis where a simple averaging of the echos provides equally good statistical results. This is likely due to the increase of inter-subject variance of contrast-to-noise ratio. Future work aims to quantitatively compare inter-subject and intra-subject variance of dual-echo data in group studies.

This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.

Join Here