Implementation of High-Performance Correlation and Mapping Engine for Rapid Generation of Brain Connectivity Networks from Big fMRI Data.

With the emergence of the dynamic functional connectivity analysis, and the studies relying on real-time neurological feedback, the need for rapid processing methods becomes even more critical. Seed-based Correlation Analysis (SCA) of fMRI data has been used to create brain connectivity networks. With close to a million voxels in a fMRI dataset, the number of calculations involved in SCA becomes high. This work aims to demonstrate a new approach which produces high-resolution brain connectivity maps rapidly. The results show that HPCME with four FPGAs can improve the SCA processing speed by a factor of 40 or more over that of a PC workstation with a multicore CPU.