These neuroimaging techniques utilize differences in tissue density to produce data that can be reconstructed into visual images, which can then be analyzed quantitatively using specialized software packages and data processing pipelines. By standardizing the acquisition of such MR data sets across magnets of different field strength manufactured by different vendors, these results can then be compared across different groups of patients, and across multiple sites and studies. Unfortunately, due to the extensive cost and time required to conduct such studies and analyze the resulting data, sample sizes often tend to be small, increasing chances for bias, thus underlying a need for replicating the results of any individual study in any particular cohort.
