Department of Neurological Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA; Medical Scientist Training Program, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA; Division of Neurotechnology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA.
Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA.
J Neurosci Methods. 2024 Feb;402:110011. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2023.110011. Epub 2023 Nov 18.
Resting-state fMRI is increasingly used to study the effects of gliomas on the functional organization of the brain. A variety of preprocessing techniques and functional connectivity analyses are represented in the literature. However, there so far has been no systematic comparison of how alternative methods impact observed results.
We first surveyed current literature and identified alternative analytical approaches commonly used in the field. Following, we systematically compared alternative approaches to atlas registration, parcellation scheme, and choice of graph-theoretical measure as regards differentiating glioma patients (N = 59) from age-matched reference subjects (N = 163).
Our results suggest that non-linear, as opposed to affine registration, improves structural match to an atlas, as well as measures of functional connectivity. Functionally- as opposed to anatomically-derived parcellation schemes maximized the contrast between glioma patients and reference subjects. We also demonstrate that graph-theoretic measures strongly depend on parcellation granularity, parcellation scheme, and graph density.
Our current work primarily focuses on technical optimization of rs-fMRI analysis in glioma patients and, therefore, is fundamentally different from the bulk of papers discussing glioma-induced functional network changes. We report that the evaluation of glioma-induced alterations in the functional connectome strongly depends on analytical approaches including atlas registration, choice of parcellation scheme, and graph-theoretical measures.
静息态 fMRI 越来越多地用于研究脑胶质瘤对大脑功能组织的影响。文献中提出了各种预处理技术和功能连接分析方法。然而，目前还没有系统比较替代方法如何影响观察结果。
我们首先调查了当前的文献，并确定了该领域常用的替代分析方法。随后，我们系统地比较了替代的图谱配准、分割方案和图论度量选择方法，以区分胶质瘤患者（N=59）和年龄匹配的参考受试者（N=163）。
我们的结果表明，与线性配准相比，非线性配准可以改善与图谱的结构匹配，以及功能连接的测量。与基于解剖学的分割方案相比，基于功能的分割方案最大限度地提高了胶质瘤患者和参考受试者之间的对比。我们还证明了图论度量强烈依赖于分割粒度、分割方案和图密度。
我们目前的工作主要集中在胶质瘤患者 rs-fMRI 分析的技术优化上，因此，与大量讨论胶质瘤引起的功能网络变化的论文从根本上不同。我们报告说，功能连接体中胶质瘤诱导的改变的评估强烈依赖于分析方法，包括图谱配准、分割方案的选择和图论度量。
