Why voxel-based morphometry should be used

Abstract

This article has been written in response to Dr. Fred L. Bookstein's article entitled '"Voxel-Based Morphometry" Should Not Be Used with Imperfectly Registered Images' in this issue of NeuroImage. We will address three main issues: (i) Dr. Bookstein appears to have misunderstood the objective of voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and the nature of the continuum we referred to. (ii) We agree with him when he states that findings from VBM can pertain to systematic registration errors during spatial normalization. (iii) His argument about voxelwise tests on smooth data holds in the absence of error variance, but is of no consequence when using actual data. We first review the tenets of VBM, paying particular attention to the relationship between VBM and tensor-based morphometry. The last two sections of this response deal with the specific concerns raised by Dr. Bookstein.