Predicting Tasks from Task-fMRI Using Blind Source Separation

Signal estimation from functional magnetic resonance imaging data (fMRI) is a difficult and challenging task that involves carefully chosen models that can be validated by domain experts. Blind source separation (BSS) techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA), independent component analysis (ICA), and tensor decomposition have been proposed for estimating the task-fMRI signals. However, few studies have investigated their efficacy for classifying different tasks. This paper proposes yet another novel method to validate the signal estimation using predictive performance of the methods. Three commonly used BSS techniques are used for estimating signals (spatio-temporal maps) from task-fMRI. The dataset (consisting of 4 tasks) is taken from the Human Connectome Project (HCP). The extracted temporal signals are used to train a classifier that classifies two different tasks. For a binary classification, a Constrained-PARAFAC tensor decomposition achieves 92% accuracy for differentiating gambling vs. relational tasks. In addition, results for other binary task classifications are also presented. Overall, the proposed Constrained-PARAFAC performs better in prediction performance compared to PCA and ICA.