Incidental finding on Structural Scan, am I able to use resting state scan?

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Hello :slight_smile:

I had a participant that had an incidental finding on their structural scan (specifically small blood vessel disease) and am wondering if this means that I should not use their scan for a resting-state analysis I am running.

I know typically papers will exclude participants with incidental findings, but I have quite low N and am trying to salvage any participants were possible.

I am wondering if during fMRIPrep if the pipeline would assume the structural scan is ‘normal’ and therefore it would then impact classification of WM, GM and CSF - which might then impact resting state registration?

Thanks

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Hi @etow6030,

I would just look at your outputs directly, in particular the spatially normalized T1w compared to the templateflow T1w. I’d also look at the compcor ROIs in the HTML to make sure its masks were chosen in appropriate spots. If they look fine, the image should be technically able to use.

However, given the cardiac and blood perfusion relationships with fMRI global signal, this disease could have confounding effects on your connectivity results. You should strongly consider that aspect, even if the image completes processing okay.

Best,
Steven