title: A highly parallelized framework for computationally intensive MR data analysis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The goal of this study was to develop a comprehensive magnetic resonance (MR) data analysis framework for handling very large datasets with user-friendly tools for parallelization and to provide an example implementation.
  
  
  METHODS
  Commonly used software packages (AFNI, FSL, SPM) were connected via a framework based on the free software environment R, with the possibility of using Nvidia CUDA GPU processing integrated for high-speed linear algebra operations in R. Three hundred single-subject datasets from the 1,000 Functional Connectomes project were used to demonstrate the capabilities of the framework.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A framework for easy implementation of processing pipelines was developed and an R package for the example implementation of Fully Exploratory Network ICA was compiled. Test runs on data from 300 subjects demonstrated the computational advantages of a processing pipeline developed using the framework compared to non-parallelized processing, reducing computation time by a factor of 15.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The feasibility of computationally intensive exploratory analyses allows broader access to the tools for discovery science.
authors.affiliation: Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Roland N
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Boubela
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Huf
authors.forename: Klaudius
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kalcher
authors.forename: Ronald
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sladky
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Filzmoser
authors.forename: Lukas
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pezawas
authors.forename: Siegfried
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kasper
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Windischberger
authors.forename: Ewald
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Moser
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D056808:Biostatistics; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012984:Software
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