A Similarity Retrieval Tool for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Statistical Maps

A fundamental goal in functional neuroimaging is to identify areas of activation in the brain relative to a given task. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is one technique used to identify such changes because changes in neuronal activity along a given region of the brain can be captured by a corresponding change in voxel value intensity on the acquired fMRI image. Statistical parametric mapping (SPM) [13] is the current popular technique used to analyze fMRI images. An SPM image contains test statistics determined at each pixel by the ratio between the intensity of the signal and its variance across experimental conditions.