Hi Anson,
Qdec can only do cross sectional analyses, therefore currently we supply scripts for a very simple 2 stage approach: 1. create within subjects linear fits to compute the rate of atrophy or percent change. This gives a single number per subjects (per region or vertex). 2. compare that measure across subjects (or across groups). For this you can use QDEC, e.g. to ask where is the atrophy rate significantly different from zero or where does it differ between groups. All columns with numerical variables are averaged across time and you have a single entry per subject. Since the atrophy rate was computed from all time points, the average seemed more appropriate, than e.g. the baseline value. For time you would put the actual time between your scans, e.g. the age of the subject at that time point, or 0 and 1.2 ... in years (or weeks). This is important to interpret your 'rate' e.g. mm/years . For test retest you can put anything that has a difference of 1, e.g. (0 and 1) or (1 and 2) because you want the difference in mm (not divided by some number).
So everything is fine as you describe it below.
Best, Martin
On Wed, 2012-07-18 at 18:06 +0000, Kairys, Anson wrote:
Hello FS experts,
I am running a group up subjects pre/post treatment.
When trying to do group analysis, after converting data with the mri_slope command, when I made the long table into a cross table, I noticed in qdec it averaged my “time” variable and only supplies a mean and there is no longer separate timepoints for subjects, just one value per subject. Do I need to define time as something more descriptive than 0 (tp1) and 1 (tp2)? I am so close to analyzing these data, just need a little help with the group analysis
Thanks
Anson
Electronic Mail is not secure, may not be read every day, and should not be used for urgent or sensitive issues
Freesurfer mailing list Freesurfer@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu https://mail.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/freesurfer