A novel framework for groupwise registration of fMRI images based on common functional networks

Accurate registration plays a critical role in group-wise functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) image analysis, as spatial correspondence among different brain images is a prerequisite for inferring meaningful patterns. However, the problem is challenging and remains open, and more effort should be made to advance the state-of-the-art image registration methods for fMRI images. Inspired by the observation that common functional networks can be reconstructed from fMRI image across individuals, we propose a novel computational framework for simultaneous groupwise fMRI image registration by utilizing those common functional networks as references for spatial alignments. In this framework, firstly, individualized functional networks in each subject are inferred using Independent Component Analysis (ICA); secondly, congealing groupwise registration that takes entropy of stacked independent components (ICs) from all the subjects as objective function is applied to register individual functional maps for maximal matching. The proposed framework is evaluated by and applied to an Alzheimer's Disease (AD) fMRI dataset and shows reasonably good results.