Discrimination surfaces with application to region-specific brain asymmetry analysis

Abstract

Discrimination surfaces are here introduced as a diagnostic tool for localizing brain regions where discrimination between diseased and nondiseased participants is higher. To estimate discrimination surfaces, we introduce a Mann-Whitney type of statistic for random fields and present large-sample results characterizing its asymptotic behavior. Simulation results demonstrate that our estimator accurately recovers the true surface and corresponding interval of maximal discrimination. The empirical analysis suggests that in the anterior region of the brain, schizophrenic patients tend to present lower local asymmetry scores in comparison with participants in the control group.

Keywords: Mann-Whitney statistic; conditional area under the curve; distance to symmetry; neuroanatomical asymmetry; receiver operating characteristic; schizophrenia.