Temporal–spatial mean-shift clustering analysis to improve functional MRI activation detection

Cluster analysis (CA) is often used in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis to improve detection of functional activations. Commonly used clustering techniques typically only consider spatial information of a statistical parametric image (SPI) in their calculations. This study examines incorporating the temporal characteristics of acquired fMRI data with mean-shift clustering (MSC) for fMRI analysis to enhance activation detections. Simulated data and real fMRI data was used to compare the commonly used cluster analysis with MSC using a feature space containing temporal characteristics. Receiver Operating Characteristic curves show that improvements in low contrast to noise scenarios using MSC over CA and our previous MSC technique at all tested simulated activation sizes. The proposed MSC technique with a feature space using both temporal and spatial data characteristics shows improved activation detection for both simulated and real Blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) fMRI data (approximately 60% increase). The proposed techniques are useful in techniques that inherently have low contrast to noise ratios, such as non-proton imaging or high resolution BOLD fMRI.