Dear FIRST experts,
I am faced with the task of comparing the sub-cortical anatomy of a group of
controls to a group with known differences in brain shape, so I (or a reviewer)
might wonder if the standard priors generated by the CMA brains would
represent a bias in my comparison, since my controls will likely look more like
the CMA data than my abnormal group. Is there some facility for generating
customized priors in FIRST, perhaps by running my two groups through FIRST,
then using the output to create an analysis-specific set of priors? From the
FIRST documentation, I see the note below, but I'm not sure if it's relevant, or
if so, how I might make use of the bvars output.
"output_name_first.bvars: Do not delete this file. It contains the mode
parameters and the model used. This file, along with the appropriate model
files, can be used to reconstruct the other outputs. The mode parameters are
what FIRST optimizes. This output can be used be used later as to perform
vertex analysis or as a shape prior to segment other shapes."
Any thoughts appreciated,
Shane Kippenhan
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