Search

Voxel hierarchy on dynamic brain graphs is produced by k core percolation on functional dynamic amplitude correlation of resting-state fMRI. Directed graphs and their afferent/efferent capacities are produced by Markov modeling of the universal cover of undirected graphs simultaneously with the calculation of volume entropy. Positive and unsigned negative brain graphs were analyzed separately on sliding-window representation to underpin the visualization and quantitation of mental dynamic states with their transitions. Voxel hierarchy animation maps of positive graphs revealed abrupt changes in coreness k and kmaxcore, which we called mental state transitions. Afferent voxel capacities of the positive graphs also revealed transient modules composed of dominating voxels/independent components and their exchanges representing mental state transitions. Animation and quantification plots of voxel hierarchy and afferent capacity corroborated each other in underpinning mental state transitions and afferent module exchange on the positive directed functional connectivity graphs. We propose the use of spatiotemporal trajectories of voxels on positive dynamic graphs to construct hierarchical structures by k core percolation and quantified in- and out-flows of information of voxels by volume entropy/directed graphs to subserve diverse resting mental state transitions on resting-state fMRI graphs in normal human individuals.

Linear matrix factorizations (LMFs) such as independent component analysis (ICA), principal component analysis (PCA), and their extensions, have been widely used for finding relevant spatial maps in brain imaging data. The last step of an LMF before interpretation is usually to extract the activated brain regions from the map by thresholding. However, it is difficult to determine an appropriate threshold level. Thresholding can remove the underlying properties of spatial maps and their features imposed by the model. In this study, we propose a threshold-free activated region extraction method which involves simplifying a brain spatial map to a dendrogram through Morse filtration. Since a dendrogram is related to the change of clustering structure in Rips filtration, we first show the relationship between the Rips filtration of a graph and the Morse filtration of a function. Then, we dendrogramize a spatial map in order to visualize the activated brain regions and the range of their importance in a spatial map. The proposed method can be applied to any spatial maps that a user wants to threshold and interpret. In experiments, we applied the proposed method to independent component maps (ICMs) obtained from resting-state fMRI data, and the dominant subnetworks obtained by the PCA of a correlation-based functional connectivity of FDG PET Alzheimer's disease neuroimaging initiative (ADNI) data. We found that dendrogramization can help to understand a brain spatial map without thresholding.