Abstract #0458

Statistical Assessment of the Effects of Physiological Noise and Artifacts in a Population Analysis of Diffusion Tensor MRI Data

Lindsay Walker¹, Lin-Ching Chang^1,2, Efstathios Kanterakis³, Luke Bloy³, Kristina Simonyan⁴, Ragini Verma³, Carlo Pierpaoli¹

¹NICHD, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA; ²Dept of EE & CS, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA; ³Dept of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; ⁴NINDS, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA

Corrupted DWI data has an effect on DTI derived quantities. An analysis of the effect of physiological noise on statistical analysis of a population is presented. Comparison of non-robust and RESTORE robust tensor fitting shows significant differences in the mean and variance of anisotropy and mean diffusivity. The effects are regionally varying across the brain, and not the same for different tensor derived metrics. When considering a statistical analysis of a population, the effect of outliers may not be the same for both patient and control groups. Statistically significant results may originate from the presence of outliers instead of pathology.