A new method for fMRI data processing: Neighborhood independent component correlation algorithm and its preliminary application

Independent component analysis (ICA) is a newly developed promising technique in signal processing applications. The effective separation and discrimination of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) signals is an area of active research and widespread interest. Therefore, the development of an ICA based fMRI data processing method is of obvious value both theoretically and in potential applications. In this paper, analyzed firstly is the drawback of the extant popular ICA-fMRI method where the adopted signal model assumes the independence of spatial distributions of the signals and noise. Then presented is a new fMRI signal model, which assumes the independence of temporal courses of signal and noise in a tiny spatial domain. Consequently we get a novel fMRI data processing method: Neighborhood independent component correlation algorithm. The effectiveness is elucidated through theoretical analysis and simulation tests, and finally a real fMRI data test is presented.