Technology, tools, and resources — needs
- There remains a need for improved understanding of fMRI signals, as well as the signature of other imaging modalities.
- There is a need for research to validate whether imaging measures and tools — e.g., cortical thickness (as seen on MRI) — are correlated with histological findings.
- Problems created by the lack of adequate tools may be compounded by researchers' misuse of these tools. Both may result in spurious findings when software is neither validated nor tested across sites in different situations.
- These needs are particularly pressing for pediatric neuroimaging, as standard image processing packages have been optimized for adult brains that are changing less rapidly than children's brains.
- Most major software packages have been developed at European institutions and have required ongoing support.
- Scientists in aging research might consider partnering with those in pediatric developmental research, as both fields share needs for tools to study age-related change.
- The field would benefit from further DTI statistical development, validation studies involving human and animal work in parallel, standard software packages, and methods for normalizing across age groups.
- Tools and a graphical user interface (GUI) are needed for integrating multiple imaging modalities (fMRI, aMRI, DTI, MRS) and to bring diverse datasets together into a spatially normalized template.
