Abstract
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become the standard technology in human brain mapping. Analyses of the massive spatio-temporal fMRI data sets often focus on parametric or nonparametric modeling of the temporal component, while spatial smoothing is based on Gaussian kernels or random fields. A weakness of Gaussian spatial smoothing is underestimation of activation peaks or blurring of high-curvature transitions between activated and non-activated brain regions. In this paper, we introduce a class of inhomogeneous Markov random fields (MRF) with spatially adaptive interaction weights in a space-varying coefficient model for fMRI data. For given weights, the random field is conditionally Gaussian, but marginally it is non-Gaussian. Fully Bayesian inference, including estimation of weights and variance parameters, is carried out through efficient MCMC simulation. An application to fMRI data from a visual stimulation experiment demonstrates the performance of our approach in comparison to Gaussian and robustified non-Gaussian Markov random field models.
Item Type: | Paper |
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Faculties: | Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics > Statistics > Collaborative Research Center 386 Special Research Fields > Special Research Field 386 |
Subjects: | 500 Science > 510 Mathematics |
URN: | urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-1825-7 |
Language: | English |
Item ID: | 1825 |
Date Deposited: | 11. Apr 2007 |
Last Modified: | 04. Nov 2020, 12:45 |