ArticleHuman brain mapping2018
Statistical harmonization corrects site effects in functional connectivity measurements from multi-site fMRI data.
Article in Human brain mapping, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 281 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
281 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Resting-state network alterations in depression: a comprehensive meta-analysis of functional connectivity.Psychological medicine · 2025Pooled it
- The diagnosis of ASD with MRI: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Translational psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Diffusion-Weighted Imaging in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Systematic Review of the Literature.Neuropsychology review · 2023Pooled it
- Individualized fMRI connectivity defines signatures of antidepressant and placebo responses in major depression.Molecular psychiatry · 2023Trial
- Aberrant salience is selectively associated with ventral midbrain connectivity to the dorsal but not ventral striatum.Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Heterogeneous functional state dynamics and its structural substrates in male individuals with autism spectrum disorder.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Elucidating the neuropathological and molecular heterogeneity of amyloid beta and tau in Alzheimer's disease through machine learning and transcriptomic integration.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- The Impact of Denoising Approaches on the Relationship Between Alzheimer's Disease Diagnostic Status and Network Topology Measures.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Transdiagnostic Neurobiology of Social Cognition and Individual Variability as Measured by Fractional Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuation in Autism and Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2026Article
- Disrupted hierarchical functional brain organization in affective and psychotic disorders: insights from functional brain gradients.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Negative affect and peripheral inflammation: The role of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2026Article
- HARMONY: A large-scale harmonized neuroimaging dataset for research on anxious misery disorders.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Neuroanatomical Cerebellar Patterns in Autism Spectrum Disorder.The Eurasian journal of medicine · 2026Article
- Auditory Network Discoherence in Chronic Tinnitus.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- A NOVEL BAYESIAN FRAMEWORK UNCOVERING BRAIN CONNECTIVITY-TO-SHAPE RELATIONSHIP IN PRECLINICAL ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE.The annals of applied statistics · 2026Article
- ComBat-Predict Enhances Generalizability of Neuroimaging Models to New Sites.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Harmonization in magnetic resonance imaging: A survey of acquisition, image-level, and feature-level methods.Medical image analysis · 2026Review
- Replicability of Functional Brain Networks: A Study Through the Lens of Seven Resting-State Networks.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- A Framework for Advancing Mechanistic Neurobehavioral Biomarkers in Psychiatry.Biological psychiatry · 2026Review
- ComBat Harmonization With and Without Empirical Bayes Estimation for Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Pediatric Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: a CARE4Kids Study.Research square · 2026Article
221 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Acquiring resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) datasets at multiple MRI scanners and clinical sites can improve statistical power and generalizability of results. However, multi-site neuroimaging studies have reported considerable nonbiological variability in fMRI measurements due to different scanner manufacturers and acquisition protocols. These undesirable sources of variability may limit power to detect effects of interest and may even result in erroneous findings. Until now, there has not been an approach that removes unwanted site effects. In this study, using a relatively large multi-site (4 sites) fMRI dataset, we investigated the impact of site effects on functional connectivity and network measures estimated by widely used connectivity metrics and brain parcellations. The protocols and image acquisition of the dataset used in this study had been homogenized using identical MRI phantom acquisitions from each of the neuroimaging sites; however, intersite acquisition effects were not completely eliminated. Indeed, in this study, we found that the magnitude of site effects depended on the choice of connectivity metric and brain atlas. Therefore, to further remove site effects, we applied ComBat, a harmonization technique previously shown to eliminate site effects in multi-site diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and cortical thickness studies. In the current work, ComBat successfully removed site effects identified in connectivity and network measures and increased the power to detect age associations when using optimal combinations of connectivity metrics and brain atlases. Our proposed ComBat harmonization approach for fMRI-derived connectivity measures facilitates reliable and efficient analysis of retrospective and prospective multi-site fMRI neuroimaging studies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.