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Dear SPMers,

We have had some lively debate about the normalization quality for several brains with large ventricles (see here https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B2N0iTxTkqzWYjMzMzQ1YmQtYzk0Yi00MTE3LWI4NjUtY2JhMmM2OTFlNWEz&hl=en_GB ). 

1) Is there is any objective, ideally quantitative, way to tell whether the normalization result is high enough quality to use in a group analysis?

2) I would love to hear people's thoughts (back channel) on whether people think that these brains can be used in a group analysis or not?

3) Are there likely to be more problems making inferences about sub cortical structures? Especially using VBM?  

These are older clinical patients with varying forms of dementia scanned on a 3T Phillips research dedicated scanner at 1mm isotropic. We have been using SPM5 and we would like to use the normalization parameters for VBM and fMRI.