Faculty Collaboration Database

The effect of scan length on the reliability of resting-state fMRI connectivity estimates. Neuroimage 2013 Dec;83:550-8

Date

06/12/2013

Pubmed ID

23747458

Pubmed Central ID

PMC4104183

DOI

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.05.099

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-84881246490 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   566 Citations

Abstract

There has been an increasing use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) by the neuroscience community to examine differences in functional connectivity between normal control groups and populations of interest. Understanding the reliability of these functional connections is essential to the study of neurological development and degenerate neuropathological conditions. To date, most research assessing the reliability with which resting-state functional connectivity characterizes the brain's functional networks has been on scans between 3 and 11 min in length. In our present study, we examine the test-retest reliability and similarity of resting-state functional connectivity for scans ranging in length from 3 to 27 min as well as for time series acquired during the same length of time but excluding half the time points via sampling every second image. Our results show that reliability and similarity can be greatly improved by increasing the scan lengths from 5 min up to 13 min, and that both the increase in the number of volumes as well as the increase in the length of time over which these volumes was acquired drove this increase in reliability. This improvement in reliability due to scan length is much greater for scans acquired during the same session. Gains in intersession reliability began to diminish after 9-12 min, while improvements in intrasession reliability plateaued around 12-16 min. Consequently, new techniques that improve reliability across sessions will be important for the interpretation of longitudinal fMRI studies.

Author List

Birn RM, Molloy EK, Patriat R, Parker T, Meier TB, Kirk GR, Nair VA, Meyerand ME, Prabhakaran V

Author

Timothy B. Meier PhD Associate Professor in the Neurosurgery department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Adult
Brain
Brain Mapping
Connectome
Female
Humans
Image Enhancement
Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted
Information Storage and Retrieval
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Nerve Net
Reproducibility of Results
Rest
Sample Size
Sensitivity and Specificity
Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted