The intrinsic connectivity distribution: a novel contrast measure reflecting voxel level functional connectivity

Resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) holds promise as a clinical tool to characterize and monitor the phenotype of different neurological and psychiatric disorders. The most common analysis approach requires the definition of one or more regions-of-interest (ROIs). However this need for a priori ROI information makes rs-fMRI inadequate to survey functional connectivity differences associated with a range of neurological disorders where the ROI information may not be available. A second problem encountered in fMRI measures of connectivity is the need for an arbitrary correlation threshold to determine whether or not two areas are connected. This is problematic because in many cases the differences in tissue connectivity between disease groups and/or control subjects are threshold dependent. In this work we propose a novel voxel-based contrast mechanism for rs-fMRI, the intrinsic connectivity distribution (ICD), that neither requires a priori information to define a ROI, nor an arbitrary threshold to define a connection. We show the sensitivity of previous methods to the choice of connection thresholds and evaluate ICD using a survey study comparing young adults born prematurely to healthy term control subjects. Functional connectivity differences were found in hypothesized language processing areas in the left temporal-parietal areas. In addition, significant clinically-relevant differences were found between preterm and term control subjects, highlighting the importance of whole brain surveys independent of a priori information.