FMRI Brain Artifact Due to Normalization: A Study J. SatheeshKumar 1,⋆ , R. Rajesh 1,⋆ , S. Arumugaperumal 2,⋆⋆ , C. Kesavdass 3,⋆ ⋆ ⋆ , and R. Rajeswari 1,⋆ 1 Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, India 2 ST Hindu College, Nagerkoil, India 3 Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Science and Technology, Trivandrum, India {jsathee,kollamrajeshr}@ieee.org, {arumugam.visvenk,chandrakesav,rrajeswari}@gmail.com Abstract. Medical Imaging is an application of image processing in which normalization is one of the important process involved in most of the medical image analysis. Normalization is the process of mapping source image with same stereotaxic space. This can be done by register- ing each image to the same template, where template can be constructed by considering average of large number of high resolution MRImages. Normalizing source image with common existing template will help in analyzing inter subject relationships based on various factors, such as, age, sex etc. But for analyzing single patient data, normalization step can be skipped by registering source image with subject’s/patient’s anatom- ical data. Since there may be a variation between template and subject data, normalization step may either stretch or shrink the source image, where there are high chances of shift in motor activation area. This paper proves with experimental results of a trivial example of a subject, where normalization step have to be ignored for single subject analysis. Keywords: Normalization, Realignment, MRI, Registration. 1 Introduction Image processing has broad spectrum of applications in which Medical imaging is an interesting area for scientists and medical researcher. Medical imaging is a process of acquiring, analyzing and inferring known and unknown informa- tion from an image of a human or living organism. Latest developments and innovations in medical history show the role and importance of medical imag- ing applications and its significant influence on increasing average human life ⋆ Dr. J. Satheesh Kumar, Dr. R. Rajesh and Ms. R. Rajeswari are with Department of Computer Applications, School of Computer Science and Engineering. ⋆⋆ Dr.S. Arumugaperumal is with Department of Computer Science. ⋆⋆⋆ Dr. C. Kesavadas is with Department of Imaging Sciences and Interventional Radiology. A. Abd Manaf et al. (Eds.): ICIEIS 2011, Part III, CCIS 253, pp. 306–319, 2011. c  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011