This paper applies a hidden Markov model to the problem of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnosis from resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Image (fMRI) scans of subjects. The proposed model considers the temporal evolution of fMRI voxel activations in the cortex, cingulate gyrus, and thalamus regions of the brain in order to make a diagnosis. Four feature dimen- sionality reduction methods are applied to the fMRI scan: voxel means, voxel weighted means, principal components analysis, and kernel principal components analysis. Using principal components analysis and kernel principal components analysis for dimensionality reduction, the proposed algorithm yielded an accu- racy of 63.01 and 62.06 , respectively, on the ADHD-200 competition dataset when differentiating between healthy control, ADHD innattentive, and ADHD combined types.
Research in recent years has provided some evidence of temporal non-stationarity of functional connectivity in resting state fMRI. In this paper, we present a novel methodology that can decode connectivity dynamics into a temporal sequence of hidden network "states" for each subject, using a Hidden Markov Modeling (HMM) framework. Each state is characterized by a unique covariance matrix or whole-brain network. Our model generates these covariance matrices from a common but unknown set of sparse basis networks, which capture the range of functional activity co-variations of regions of interest (ROIs). Distinct hidden states arise due to a variation in the strengths of these basis networks. Thus, our generative model combines a HMM framework with sparse basis learning of positive definite matrices. Results on simulated fMRI data show that our method can effectively recover underlying basis networks as well as hidden states. We apply this method on a normative dataset of resting state fMRI scans. Results indicate that the functional activity of a subject at any point during the scan is composed of combinations of overlapping task-positive negative pairs of networks as revealed by our basis. Distinct hidden temporal states are produced due to a different set of basis networks dominating the covariance pattern in each state. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has provided an invaluable method of investing real time neuron activities. Statistical tools have been developed to recognise the mental state from a batch of fMRI observations over a period. However, an interesting question is whether it is possible to estimate the real time mental states at each moment during the fMRI observation. In this paper, we address this problem by building a probabilistic model of the brain activity. We model the tempo-spatial relations among the hidden high-level mental states and observable low-level neuron activities. We verify our model by experiments on practical fMRI data. The model also implies interesting clues on the task-responsible regions in the brain. This paper introduces two unsupervised learning methods for analyzing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data based on hidden Markov model (HMM). HMM approach is focused on capturing the first-order statistical evolution among the samples of a voxel time series, and it can provide a complimentary perspective of the BOLD signals. Two-state HMM is created for each voxel, and the model parameters are estimated from the voxel time series and the stimulus paradigm. Two different activation detection methods are presented in this paper. The first method is based on the likelihood and likelihood-ratio test, in which an additional Gaussian model is used to enhance the contrast of the HMM likelihood map. The secondmethod is based on certain distance measures between the two state distributions, in which the most likely HMM state sequence is estimated through the Viterbi algorithm. The distance between the on-state and off-state distributions is measured either through a t-test, or using the Kullback-Leibler distance (KLD). Experimental results on both normal subject and brain tumor subject are presented. HMM approach appears to be more robust in detecting the supplemental active voxels comparing with SPM, especially for brain tumor subject. There have been many interpretations of functional connectivity and proposed measures of temporal correlations between BOLD signals across different brain areas. These interpretations yield from many studies on functional connectivity using resting-state fMRI data that have emerged in recent years. However, not all of these studies used the same metrics for quantifying the temporal correlations between brain regions. In this paper, we use a public-domain test–retest resting-state fMRI data set to perform a systematic investigation of the stability of the metrics that are often used in resting-state functional connectivity (FC) studies. The fMRI data set was collected across three different sessions. The second session took place approximately eleven months after the first session, and the third session was an hour after the second session. The FC metrics composed of cross-correlation, partial cross-correlation, cross-coherence, and parameters based on an autoregressive model. We discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each metric. We performed ROI-level and full-brain seed-based voxelwise test–retest analyses using each FC metric to assess its stability. For both ROI-level and voxel-level analyses, we found that cross-correlation yielded more stable measurements than the other metrics. We discussed the consequences of this result on the utility of the FC metrics. We observed that for negatively correlated ROIs, their partial cross-correlation is shrunk towards zero, thus affecting the stability of their FC. For the present data set, we found greater stability in FC between the second and third sessions (one hour between sessions) compared to the first and second sessions (approximately 11 months between sessions). Finally, we report that some of the metrics showed a positive association between strength and stability. In summary, the results presented in this paper suggest important implications when choosing metrics for quantifying and assessing various types of functional connectivity for resting-state fMRI studies.