Converting fmri data to association matrix

Question

I am currently working on a new tool for the analysis of (large) weighted networks. Association matrices (correlation matrices) as obtained from fMRI data are perfect examples of the kind of data I am looking for. Unfortunately I am only able to locate raw fMRI data and the task of converting them is way outside my expertise.

Can anyone point me to a place where such converted data can be found, or where I can download software which automatically converts the data? Preferably a dataset divided into control/disease.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can get raw FMRI data from https://openfmri.org/ on that website you'll also download your conditions files for the experimental design (you'll need this in creating your matrix). This is a link to an experiment(it's data) with "healthy" participants and participants diagnosed with schizophrenia: https://openfmri.org/dataset/ds000115

Raw image files from a scanner will be in .dcm format. You can use http://www.mccauslandcenter.sc.edu/mricro/mricron/dcm2nii.html to convert the multiple ".dcm" images of a scan into a 3 single 4D images for anatomicals, also known as T1 images. That converter will also convert the BOLD images into a single 4D image.

After conversion, the images you will want and need to load into whichever fmri data analysis software you're using will be in ".nii.gz".

Your question suggest that you don't need data analysis software but if you do, I'm only familiar with FSL, you can find information on FSL from here http://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki/

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I would suggest you to learn the basics of fMRI data analysis. It is not easy to understand everything in depth, that is for sure. Anyway, luckily, you can start with some good software (e.g. http://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki/) that does many things for you. Knowing just the basics can get you far then.

For the data, try to have a look at http://www.humanconnectome.org/data/. I think they have even preprocessed datasets.