Are there any kind of quantitative analyses (e.g., vertex/voxel-wise) that can be meaningfully carried out with FLAIR images?
I’m aware that FLAIR is generally used to assess for WM lesions and there is the Lesion Segmentation Toolbox (LST – Lesion segmentation for SPM | Paul Schmidt – freelance statistician). Apart from this, it doesn’t seem like FLAIR images have much utility, especially for a young adult sample ?
While the dominant signal in a classic T2-weighted scan is water (e.g. CSF), the T2w Fluid-Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR) sequence suppresses signal from fluid (on Siemens scanners, FLAIR sequences are often referred to as Dark Fluid). FLAIR sequences provide the backbone of many clinical routines, identifying chronic injuries and highlighting white matter hyperintensities that are commonly seen in older adults. Traditional FLAIR sequences had thick inter-slice distances to minimize acquisition time, but modern 3D FLAIR images can provide similar spatial resolution to T1-weighted sequences. For research, I agree that FLAIR sequences are most useful for work with older adults. If you have both high resolution T1w and FLAIR sequences from the same individual, multimodal tissue segmentation (e.g. SPM or CAT) might outperform segmentation based on only the T1 scan. However, if I was planning how to use my scan time for an upcoming study of healthy adults, I would not devote the time for a FLAIR (I would use this time for a better T1, either with better SNR, higher resolution, ME-MPRAGE or MP2RAGE).
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