Dear Mathieu,

While the purist in me would argue for always remaining in native space as long as possible, there are multiple reasons (many practical) for intensitiy normalisation in MNI space. A prerequisite is of course that you trust your spatial normalisation.

See e.g. Yakushev I et al. Psych Res Neuroimaging 2008 and, for an elegant alternative to purely anatomical intensity normalisation: Yakushev I et al. NeuroImage 44 (2009) 43–50

If you normalise to some anatomical region, do remember to use representative population-based anatomical atlases.

Hope this helps,

All the best,

Alexander

-----------------------------------------

Alexander Hammers, MD PhD

Professor (Honorary Consultant) of Imaging and Neuroscience

Head of PET Imaging Centre

Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering

King's College London

St Thomas' Hospital, London

Telephone +44-(0)20 7188 8364 (PA Amanda Provencal)
Email [log in to unmask]

On 9 Dec 2015, at 16:53, Matthieu Vanhoutte <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear SPM's experts,

I have a question concerning PET intensity normalization. When we use global normalization or cerebellum normalization :

1) is the mean value of the reference region taken on native PET image or on normalized PET image (on MNI PET template) ?
2) Is the normalization applied on native PET image or normalized PET image

Thanks in advance for clarification.

Best regards,
Matthieu