Efficient designs for event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging with multiple scanning sessions

Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI) is a leading technology for studying brain activity in response to mental stimuli. Due to the popularity and high cost of this pioneering technology, efficient experimental designs are in great demand. However, the complex nature of ER-fMRI makes it difficult to obtain such designs; it requires careful consideration regarding both statistical and practical issues as well as major computational efforts. In this article, we obtain efficient designs for ER-fMRI. In contrast to previous studies, we take into account a common practice where subjects undergo multiple scanning sessions in an experiment. To the best of our knowledge, this important reality has never been studied systematically for design selection. We compare several approaches to obtain efficient designs and propose a novel algorithm for this problem. Our simulation results indicate that, using our algorithm, highly efficient designs can be obtained.