The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	The Quality of fMRI Data
Language	J
AuthorList	Toshiharu Nakai¹⁾, Kayako Matsuo¹⁾, Epifanio Bagarinao²⁾
Affiliation	1) Functional Brain Imaging Lab, Department of Gerontechnology National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology 2) Grid Technology Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 23 (2), 84-96, 2007
Received
Accepted
Abstract	The advance of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has greatly expanded our knowledge of brain function in the past decade. On the other hand, fMRI has not fully established its role in clinical diagnosis. In order to establish reliable protocol for clinical fMRI, methods for individual analysis to are essential. In this article, the issues to be monitored in each step of fMRI procedure and the techniques to improve the preciseness of brain maps, which are indispensable for achieving reliable evaluation of individual analysis, are reviewed. In addition, the advantages of dynamic fMRI and medical GRID, our new approach to augment the information of brain map, is also described. Dynamic fMRI is a new proposal to visualize temporal change of brain activation. This technique enables more comprehensive correlation of the activation across the brain areas. Medical GRID is a parallel and distributed computing technology, which enables not only integrating medical imaging modalities but also indexing the activation maps according to the special and temporal characteristics.
Keywords	unctional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI, dynamic fMRI, quality control, brain mapping, real-time analysis