Statistical assessment of crosscorrelation and variance methods and the importance of electrocardiogram gating in functional magnetic resonance imaging

Processing of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data is a critical step in evaluating experimental results. We address the question of choosing between a Student t-test method, crosscorrelation method, or a weighted z-score method in analyzing functional MR images. We present an analytic analysis that makes it possible to make a statistical decision in setting the threshold for the crosscorrelation coefficient. Specifically, the …