Analysis of variance in neuroreceptor ligand imaging studies.

Ji Hyun Ko, Anthonin Reilhac, Nicola Ray, Pablo Rusjan, Peter Bloomfield, Giovanna Pellecchia, Sylvain Houle, Antonio P Strafella

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. jihyun.ko@camhpet.ca

PloS one 2011

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Radioligand positron emission tomography (PET) with dual scan paradigms can provide valuable insight into changes in synaptic neurotransmitter concentration due to experimental manipulation. The residual t-test has been utilized to improve the sensitivity of the t-test in PET studies. However, no further development of statistical tests using residuals has been proposed so far to be applied in cases when there are more than two conditions. Here, we propose the residual f-test, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and examine its feasibility using simulated [(11)C]raclopride PET data. We also re-visit data from our previously published [(11)C]raclopride PET study, in which 10 individuals underwent three PET scans under different conditions. We found that the residual f-test is superior in terms of sensitivity than the conventional f-test while still controlling for type 1 error. The test will therefore allow us to reliably test hypotheses in the smaller sample sizes often used in explorative PET studies.

Citation

Ji Hyun Ko, Anthonin Reilhac, Nicola Ray, Pablo Rusjan, Peter Bloomfield, Giovanna Pellecchia, Sylvain Houle, Antonio P Strafella. Analysis of variance in neuroreceptor ligand imaging studies. PloS one. 2011;6(8):e23298