Taylor Paul A, Glen Daniel R, Chen Gang, Cox Robert W, Hanayik Taylor, Rorden Chris, Nielson Dylan M, Rajendra Justin K, Reynolds Richard C
Scientific and Statistical Computing Core, NIMH, NIH, USA.
Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB, University of Oxford, UK.
bioRxiv. 2024 Jun 11:2024.03.27.586976. doi: 10.1101/2024.03.27.586976.
Quality control (QC) assessment is a vital part of FMRI processing and analysis, and a typically under-discussed aspect of reproducibility. This includes checking datasets at their very earliest stages (acquisition and conversion) through their processing steps (e.g., alignment and motion correction) to regression modeling (correct stimuli, no collinearity, valid fits, enough degrees of freedom, etc.) for each subject. There are a wide variety of features to verify throughout any single subject processing pipeline, both quantitatively and qualitatively. We present several FMRI preprocessing QC features available in the AFNI toolbox, many of which are automatically generated by the pipeline-creation tool, . These items include: a modular HTML document that covers full single subject processing from the raw data through statistical modeling; several review scripts in the results directory of processed data; and command line tools for identifying subjects with one or more quantitative properties across a group (such as triaging warnings, making exclusion criteria or creating informational tables). The HTML itself contains several buttons that efficiently facilitate interactive investigations into the data, when deeper checks are needed beyond the systematic images. The pages are linkable, so that users can evaluate individual items across a group, for increased sensitivity to differences (e.g., in alignment or regression modeling images). Finally, the QC document contains rating buttons for each "QC block", as well as comment fields for each, to facilitate both saving and sharing the evaluations. This increases the specificity of QC, as well as its shareability, as these files can be shared with others and potentially uploaded into repositories, promoting transparency and open science. We describe the features and applications of these QC tools for FMRI.
质量控制(QC)评估是功能磁共振成像(fMRI)处理与分析的重要组成部分,也是再现性方面一个通常较少被讨论的内容。这包括在每个受试者从最早阶段(采集和转换)到处理步骤(如配准和运动校正)再到回归建模(正确的刺激、无共线性、有效拟合、足够的自由度等)的整个过程中检查数据集。在任何单个受试者的处理流程中,都有各种各样的特征需要从定量和定性两方面进行验证。我们展示了AFNI工具包中可用的几种fMRI预处理QC特征,其中许多是由管道创建工具自动生成的。这些项目包括:一个模块化的HTML文档,涵盖从原始数据到统计建模的完整单受试者处理过程;处理后数据结果目录中的几个审查脚本;以及用于识别一组中具有一个或多个定量属性的受试者的命令行工具(例如对警告进行分类、制定排除标准或创建信息表)。当需要对系统图像进行更深入的检查时,HTML本身包含几个按钮,可有效地促进对数据的交互式研究。这些页面是可链接的,因此用户可以跨组评估各个项目,以提高对差异的敏感度(例如在配准或回归建模图像方面)。最后,QC文档包含每个“QC块”的评级按钮以及每个按钮的注释字段,以便于保存和共享评估结果。这提高了QC的特异性及其可共享性,因为这些文件可以与他人共享,并有可能上传到存储库中,从而促进透明度和开放科学。我们描述了这些用于fMRI的QC工具的特征和应用。