Hello,
I am currently doing a project involving children and have been having
problems analyzing the data in SPM. I was using the template sprovided by
the CHMCC but as I am analysing EPI images the contrasts are too different
to get a good normalisation result. Then, after searching the help list I
found a script for creating custom templates (Jan 14, 2003. Re: Help for
constructing template images from John Ashburner). From what I can see (I am
not a Matlab expert by any means), this normalises the images to the T1
template in SPM and smooths them, producing files named csf, grey, white and
template.mnc. However, again I need to make a child EPI template and not a
T1. So, I took one of the children that were aligned the best after the
normalisation stage of SPM and used this child's brain to create a template,
normalizing it to the child T1 template provided by CHMCC. I am now using
this template to normalise all of the other children to. Okay, here's my
question. I have placed the resulting files from the create template script
in a folder and temporarily replaced the apriori folder in SPM2b with this
one. Is that the way to use the files? Or, was the whole process simply not
useful and I can't be sure if the template is truly in Talairach space?
Should we just skip normalisation and use each child's anatomical images?
This would hopefully be a last resort because we also have adults and would
like to keep all analysis consistent. Sorry, about the long winded
explanation. Thanks in advance for your time,
Ava
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