A cluster mass permutation test with contextual enhancement for fMRI activation detection

Gaussian random field (GRF)-based methods are commonly used for statistical inference and to control the family-wise error rate (FWE) in neuroimaging. They require that the error fields are reasonable lattice approximations to an underlying continuous multivariate Gaussian random field and have differentiable and invertible spatial autocorrelation function. Permutation test estimates the distribution of the test statistic from the data and adjusts automatically for the FWE. Here we present a new analysis procedure, the cluster mass permutation test with contextual enhancement (CMPCE), and compare it to GRF. In CMPCE, the data are first pre-whitened to remove temporal autocorrelations. The FWE rates, the cluster detection probability and delineation accuracy of CMPCE and GRF were compared using measured null data and null data containing simulated activations. We also applied both methods to an fMRI experiment where tactile somatosensory stimulation into the right hand was used. When analyzing the FWE using null data, both CMPCE and GRF gave significantly higher FWEs (CMPCE up to 0.12, GRF up to 0.18) than the nominal significance level 0.05, indicating that the pre-whitening, motion correction or high-pass filtering partially failed. In the simulated activation data, CMPCE gave less falsely classified voxels for the same cluster detection probability level than GRF. The maximal cluster detection probability was on the other hand higher in the GRF-based method. Both methods gave qualitatively similar results in the tactile fMRI data. CMPCE seems to be a promising fMRI analysis method, especially if high delineation accuracy is required.