Site effects removing and signal enhancement using dual-projection based
ICA model
Abstract
Combining magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from multi-site studies
is a popular approach for constructing larger datasets to greatly
enhance the reliability and reproducibility of neuroscience research.
However, the scanner/site variability is a significant confound that
complicates the interpretation of the results, so effective and complete
removal of the scanner/site variability is necessary to realize the full
advantages of pooling multi-site datasets. Independent component
analysis (ICA) and general linear model (GLM) based harmonization
methods are the two primary methods used to eliminate
scanner/site-related effects. Unfortunately, there are challenges with
both ICA-based and GLM-based harmonization methods to remove site
effects completely when the signals of interest and scanner/site-related
variables are correlated, which may occur in neuroscience studies. In
this study, we propose an effective and powerful harmonization strategy
that implements dual-projection (DP) theory based on ICA to remove the
scanner/site-related effects more completely. This method can separate
the signal effects correlated with site variables from the identified
site-related effects for removal without losing signals of interest.
Both simulations and vivo structural MRI datasets, including a dataset
from Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange II and a traveling subject
dataset from the Strategic Research Program for Brain Sciences, were
used to test the performance of DP-based ICA harmonization method.
Results show that DP-based ICA harmonization has superior performance
for removing site effects and enhancing the sensitivity to detect signal
of interest as compared with GLM-based and conventional ICA
harmonization methods.