Variability Toolbox (VarTbx) for SPM

VarTbx measures within-voxel time series variability in fMRI data. The VarTbx structure is intended to be similar to a standard SPM first-level analysis. You can then proceed to pass those first-level, variability-based images to a level-2 SPM analysis in order to model group effects of interest. However, the first-level NIFTI output files could also be used within other statistics programs of your choice (e.g., FSL, AFNI, PLS).

VarTbx currently supports modeling block designs with a boxcar model, and computes temporal variability using measures such as: detrended variance (VAR), detrended standard deviation (SD), mean squared successive difference (MSSD), and SQRT(MSSD). We plan to add additional modeling approaches and variability measures in future releases.

Using VarTbx is relatively straightforward. You first specify your first-level SPM model, as usual. You then save the model, which is used as input to specify all sessions, conditions, onsets, durations, and nuisance regressors for VarTbx. Finally, after choosing a variability metric of interest, variability-based NIFTI images are then produced. A short video tutorial is available on our website.

For further information visit
http://douglasdgarrett.com/software