Assessment of bias in experimentally measured diffusion tensor imaging parameters using SIMEX.

Diffusion tensor imaging enables in vivo investigation of tissue cytoarchitecture through parameter contrasts sensitive to water diffusion barriers at the micrometer level. Parameters are derived through an estimation process that is susceptible to noise and artifacts. Estimated parameters (e.g., fractional anisotropy) exhibit both variability and bias relative to the true parameter value estimated from a hypothetical noise-free acquisition. Herein, we present the use of the simulation and extrapolation (SIMEX) approach for post hoc assessment of bias in a massively univariate imaging setting and evaluate the potential of a SIMEX-based bias correction. Using simulated data with known truth models, spatially varying fractional anisotropy bias error maps are evaluated on two independent and highly differentiated case studies. The stability of SIMEX and its distributional properties are further evaluated on 42 empirical diffusion tensor imaging datasets. Using gradient subsampling, an empirical experiment with a known true outcome is designed and SIMEX performance is compared to the original estimator. With this approach, we find SIMEX bias estimates to be highly accurate offering significant reductions in parameter bias for individual datasets and greater accuracy in averaged population-based estimates.

Towards Automatic Quantitative Quality Control for MRI.

Quality and consistency of clinical and research data collected from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners may become suspect due to a wide variety of common factors including, experimental changes, hardware degradation, hardware replacement, software updates, personnel changes, and observed imaging artifacts. Standard practice limits quality analysis to visual assessment by a researcher/clinician or a quantitative quality control based upon phantoms which may not be timely, cannot account for differing experimental protocol (e.g. gradient timings and strengths), and may not be pertinent to the data or experimental question at hand. This paper presents a parallel processing pipeline developed towards experiment specific automatic quantitative quality control of MRI data using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) as an experimental test case. The pipeline consists of automatic identification of DTI scans run on the MRI scanner, calculation of DTI contrasts from the data, implementation of modern statistical methods (wild bootstrap and SIMEX) to assess variance and bias in DTI contrasts, and quality assessment via power calculations and normative values. For this pipeline, a DTI specific power calculation analysis is developed as well as the first incorporation of bias estimates in DTI data to improve statistical analysis.

Assessment of bias for MRI diffusion tensor imaging using SIMEX.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) is a Magnetic Resonance Imaging method for measuring water diffusion in vivo. One powerful DTI contrast is fractional anisotropy (FA). FA reflects the strength of water's diffusion directional preference and is a primary metric for neuronal fiber tracking. As with other DTI contrasts, FA measurements are obscured by the well established presence of bias. DTI bias has been challenging to assess because it is a multivariable problem including SNR, six tensor parameters, and the DTI collection and processing method used. SIMEX is a modem statistical technique that estimates bias by tracking measurement error as a function of added noise. Here, we use SIMEX to assess bias in FA measurements and show the method provides; i) accurate FA bias estimates, ii) representation of FA bias that is data set specific and accessible to non-statisticians, and iii) a first time possibility for incorporation of bias into DTI data analysis.