Brainminer: A visualization tool for ROI-based discovery of functional relationships

Brain imaging methods used in experimental brain research such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Functional Magnetic Resonance (fMRI) require the analysis of vast amounts of data. Statistical methods are necessary to obtain a reliable measure of a given effect. Typically, researchers report their findings by listing those regions which show significant statistical activity in a group of subjects under some experimental condition or task. These inter-relationships can become rather complex and are best understood in the context of the underlying 3D brain anatomy. In this paper, we present a novel powerful 3D interface that allows the interactive exploration and visual mining of correlational datasets within a common stereotaxic atlas