The Influence of the Registration on Voxel-Based Statistics of Fractional Anisotropy Images: Using Detected White Matter Degenerations Associated with Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy as a Gold Standard

Siawoosh Mohammadi¹, Volkmar H. Glauche², Simon S. Keller¹, Michael Deppe¹

Recent developments have enabled automated voxel-based statistical (VBS) analyses of fractional anisotropy (FA) images (FA-VBS). However, due to the lack of a gold standard the question, which spatial normalization is best for FA-VBS, is still not answered. To assess the influence of the registration on the FA-VBS results, we investigate the white matter (WM) of juvenile myoclonic epilepsy patients with a-priori known damage that correlates with the frequency of generalized tonic-clonic seizures (GTCS). To perform the registration we used the SPM-normalization toolbox. We showed that the correlation between GTCS and WM-damage was best detected if multi-contrast, iterative registration was used.