The BrainSuite Statistics toolbox (bss) enables group comparisons and population level statistical analysis for brain imaging outputs processed in BrainSuite. Importantly bss allows the application of advanced statistical models to volumetric image, cortical surface and sulcal curve based outputs generated from BrainSuite.
After processing brain imaging data, typically users may be interested in the following questions:
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What is the main effect of diagnosis on brain structure?
How does cortical thickness relate to age?
- Does the relationship change if gender is considered?
- What if I add extra factors (covariates)?
- How to conduct a statistical analysis comparing brains of patients with healthy controls in a population?
- How does a particular diagnosis influence volumetric changes in the brain?
- What if I have a hypothesized brain region of interest (ROI)?
- How to conduct a statistical analysis comparing brains of patients with healthy controls in a population?
Statistical techniques such as general linear modeling, ANOVA/ANCOVA are generall used to answer such questions. In the tutorials below, we show how the answers to some of the above questions can be obtained on brain imaging data using bss.
Download the file for the following tutorial data package here and unzip this file in a convenient location, such as your desktop. It contains the folder USC2015_BrainSuiteWorkshop, in which you will find the ICBM25 folder, which contains the necessary files to run all the tutorials listed below.
Types of Analyses:
- Tensor-based morphometry: correlation test
- Cortical-based morphometry: ANOVA test
- ROI-based analysis: ANOVA test