As medical imaging enters the information era, there is a rapidly increasing need for big data analytics. Robust pooling and harmonization of multi-site data across diverse cohorts is critical. We compare the performances of current basic methods with ComBat, an Empirical Bayes method that removes batch effects, in harmonizing 1H Brain MR Spectroscopy (MRS) of healthy controls from 4 sites. Basic harmonization did not bring metabolite means closer together and increased variance, while ComBat successfully removed significant site effects as determined by ANOVA and Levene's tests. These results may improve reproducibility and generalizability of MRS studies, especially in clinical space.
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