Neuroimaging in Kingston will take place on the 3T Siemens Magnetom Prisma Fit scanner located in the Centre for Neuroscience Studies at Queen’s University. The protocol employs sequences adapted from the Human Connectome Project (http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/ ) and diffusion imaging is based on recommendations from DSI Studio (http://dsi-studio.labsolver.org/Manual/b-table-for-qbi-dsi-and-gqi-scans ). The established protocol includes the following acquisitions:
A harmonised sequence will be implemented on the 3T GE MR750 scanner located in Halifax with a 32-channel Nova Medical coil and be validated with two human volunteers scanned at both sites. Image quality will be assessed using MRIQC (poldracklab.github.io/mriqc/). Any biases in quantitative metrics between the two sites will be corrected using ComBat, an algorithm first described in genomics that derives a batch-specific transformation to express all data in a common space removing any batch effects using an empirical Bayes framework.45 (link) In this case, the ‘batches’ are the two centres. This approach has been validated in neuroimaging studies46 47 (link) and used in prior multicentre epilepsy neuroimaging studies as part of the ENIGMA Consortium.48 (link)
A harmonised sequence will be implemented on the 3T GE MR750 scanner located in Halifax with a 32-channel Nova Medical coil and be validated with two human volunteers scanned at both sites. Image quality will be assessed using MRIQC (poldracklab.github.io/mriqc/). Any biases in quantitative metrics between the two sites will be corrected using ComBat, an algorithm first described in genomics that derives a batch-specific transformation to express all data in a common space removing any batch effects using an empirical Bayes framework.45 (link) In this case, the ‘batches’ are the two centres. This approach has been validated in neuroimaging studies46 47 (link) and used in prior multicentre epilepsy neuroimaging studies as part of the ENIGMA Consortium.48 (link)
