Stability-Based Sparse Paradigm Free Mapping Algorithm for Deconvolution of Functional MRI Data

Neuronal-related activity can be estimated from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data with no knowledge of the timings of blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) events by means of deconvolution with regularized least-squares. This work proposes two improvements on the deconvolution algorithm of sparse paradigm free mapping (SPFM): a new formulation that enables the estimation of neuronal events with long, sustained activity; and the implementation of a subsampling approach based on stability selection that avoids the choice of any regularization parameter. The proposed method is evaluated on real fMRI data and compared with both the original SPFM algorithm and conventional analysis with a general linear model (GLM) that is aware of the temporal model of the neuronal-related activity. We demonstrate that the novel stability-based SPFM algorithm yields activation maps with higher resemblance to the maps obtained with GLM analyses and offers improved detection of neuronal-related events over SPFM, particularly in scenarios with low contrast-to-noise ratio.