Chris J. Rose1,
James P. O'Connor1, 2, Tim F. Cootes1, Chris
J. Taylor1, Gordon C. Jayson3, Geoff J. M. Parker1,
John C. Waterton1, 4
1Center
for Imaging Sciences, Manchester Academic Health Science Center, The
University of Manchester, Manchester, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom; 2Department
of Radiology, The Christie, Manchester, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom; 3Department
of Medical Oncology, The Christie, Manchester, Greater Manchester, United
Kingdom; 4AstraZeneca, Alderley Park, Cheshire, United Kingdom
MRI can spatially map biophysical and physiological parameters across organs and tumors, and is often used in natural history studies and preclinical and clinical trials of novel drugs. In such research, there is a need to draw statistical inferences about the population, based on a sample. It is common to perform hypothesis tests by taking averages over each structure, but spatially heterogeneous differences can attenuate statistical power. We compare the recently-proposed indexed distribution analysis (IDA) to the conventional and histogram analysis approaches using well-controlled simulated and clinical data. IDA has several advantages over conventional and histogram analysis methods.
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