From spatial regularization to anatomical priors in fMRI analysis.

In this paper, we study Markov Random Fields as spatial smoothing priors in fMRI detection. Relatively high noise in fMRI images presents a serious challenge for the detection algorithms, creating a need for spatial regularization of the signal. Gaussian smoothing, traditionally employed to boost the signal-to-noise ratio, often removes small activation regions. Recently, the use of Markov priors has been suggested as an alternative regularization approach. In this work, we investigate fast approximate inference algorithms for using MRFs in fMRI detection, propose a novel way to incorporate anatomical information into the detection framework, validate the methods through ROC analysis on simulated data and demonstrate their application in a real fMRI study.