An open science resource for establishing reliability and reproducibility in functional connectomics

Efforts to identify meaningful functional imaging-based biomarkers are limited by the ability to reliably characterize inter-individual differences in human brain function. Although a growing number of connectomics-based measures are reported to have moderate to high test-retest reliability, the variability in data acquisition, experimental designs, and analytic methods precludes the ability to generalize results. The Consortium for Reliability and Reproducibility (CoRR) is working to address this challenge and establish test-retest reliability as a minimum standard for methods development in functional connectomics. Specifically, CoRR has aggregated 1,629 typical individuals’ resting state fMRI (rfMRI) data (5,093 rfMRI scans) from 18 international sites, and is openly sharing them via the International Data-sharing Neuroimaging Initiative (INDI). To allow researchers to generate various estimates of reliability and reproducibility, a variety of data acquisition procedures and experimental designs are included. Similarly, to enable users to assess the impact of commonly encountered artifacts (for example, motion) on characterizations of inter-individual variation, datasets of varying quality are included

A Guided Tour of Connective Morphology: Concepts, Algorithms, and Applications

Connective morphology has been an active area of research for more than two decades. Based on an abstract notion of connectivity, it allows development of perceptual grouping of pixels using different connectivity classes. Images are processed based on these perceptual groups, rather than some rigid neighbourhood imposed upon the image in the form of a fixed structuring element. The progress in this field has been threefold: (i) development of a mathematical framework; (ii) development of fast algorithms, and (iii) application of the methodology in very diverse fields. In this talk I will review these developments, and describe relationships to other image-adaptive methods. I will also discuss the opportunities for use in multi-scale analysis and inclusion of machine learning within connected filters