Lisa Bauer with Robert Brown

Statistics in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

While traditional Magnetic Resonance Imaging is used to visualize the structure of the body, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) measures neural activity in the brain and spinal cord, providing a mechanism to study brain function.  When an area of the brain is active, it uses oxygen faster than inactive regions.  Blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) fMRI is a method of locating active areas of the brain at a given time, by visualizing changes in local magnetic susceptibility of blood.  A statistical analysis of fMRI data after repeated actions or thoughts could be used to localize these actions or thoughts in the brain.  A number of techniques are available for analysis of fMRI data, but several challenges remain, notably in choosing which data are suitable for analysis.  This project endeavors to understand the challenges in statistical analysis of fMRI data, and to study new methods of analyzing data.