Multitask fMRI Data Classification via Group-Wise Hybrid Temporal and Spatial Sparse Representations

Task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (tfMRI) has been widely used to induce functional brain activities corresponding to various cognitive tasks. A relatively under-explored question is whether there exist fundamental differences in fMRI signal composition patterns that can effectively classify the task states of tfMRI data, furthermore, whether there exist key functional components in characterizing the diverse tfMRI signals. Recently, fMRI signal composition patterns of multiple tasks have been investigated via deep learning models, where relatively large populations of fMRI datasets are indispensable and the neurologic meaning of their results is elusive. Thus, the major challenges arise from the high dimensionality, low signal-to-noise ratio, interindividual variability, a small sample size of fMRI data, and the explainability of classification results. To address the above challenges, we proposed a computational framework based on group-wise hybrid temporal and spatial sparse representations (HTSSR) to identify and differentiate multitask fMRI signal composition patterns. Using relatively small cohorts of Human Connectome Project (HCP) tfMRI data as test-bed, the experimental results demonstrated that the multitask of fMRI data can be successfully classified with an average accuracy of 96.67%, where the key components in differentiating the multitask can be characterized, suggesting the effectiveness and explainability of the proposed method. Moreover, both task-related components and resting-state networks (RSNs) can be reliably detected. Therefore, our study proposed a novel framework that identifies the interpretable and discriminative fMRI composition patterns and can be potentially applied for controlling fMRI data quality and inferring biomarkers in brain disorders with small sample neuroimaging datasets.