title: Group factor analysis for Alzheimer's disease.
abstract: For any neuroimaging study in an institute, brain images are normally acquired from healthy controls and patients using a single track of protocol. Traditionally, the factor analysis procedure analyzes image data for healthy controls and patients either together or separately. The former unifies the factor pattern across subjects and the latter deals with measurement errors individually. This paper proposes a group factor analysis model for neuroimaging applications by assigning separate factor patterns to control and patient groups. The clinical diagnosis information is used for categorizing subjects into groups in the analysis procedure. The proposed method allows different groups of subjects to share a common covariance matrix of measurement errors. The empirical results show that the proposed method provides more reasonable factor scores and patterns and is more suitable for medical research based on image data as compared with the conventional factor analysis model.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan. wccheng@stat.sinica.edu.tw
authors.forename: Wei-Chen
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Philip E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Liou
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D015233:Models, Statistical; D016011:Normal Distribution; D011336:Probability; D015203:Reproducibility of Results