Postprocess Tab

Data set selection

To do group analysis on a set of CBF processed jobs, you need the first select the CBF jobs you want to participate in the group analysis. To facilitate this selection, CBFDAP provides data set filtering mechanism based on clinical assessment and CBF job data provenance criteria.

The main components of the Search panel are

Search Criterion Panel

Each search criterion panel allows you to define a filter on a single variable (a clinical assessment score or a provenance field). If you have selected a clinical assessment criterion, then you will see a dropdown with all the clinical assessments available in the CBFDAP. When you select a clinical assessment from this dropdown, the score dropdown next to it is populated with the scores (variables) available for that assessment. Depending on the type of the variable (numeric, string, binary or date type) all available operators for that score is shown next. If you have more than one search criterion, the search criteria are joined together with logical connectives 'and' and/or 'or'. The default logical connective is 'and'. For example, the filter depicted in Figure 1, translates to 'select all CBF jobs for TMARC_4S_FAIR project having male subjects AND have no field map processing AND have gray matter threshold value greater than equal 0.8'.

To remove a search criterion panel from the search filter, click on the delete button ( ) on the left side of the corresponding search criterion panel.

Search Operators

Depending on the type of the search criterion variable different operators are available. The full set of available operators is shown below;

Numeric criterion variables
String criterion variables
Date criterion variables
For these kind of variables CBFDAP provides calendar widgets to pick the criterion date(s) as shown below (XX add image).

Incremental Building of Group Analysis CBF Job Data Sets

CBF job data series sometimes cannot be selected with one search filter. For these situations, the ability of selecting the final data set incrementally via combination of multiple different search filter results might be desirable. In CBFDAP, you can accomplish this by building search filters in the Search panel and pressing 'Search' button after each constructed search filter. The results from each search filter is combined, duplicates are removed and results are sorted by project, subject and visit, respectively.

Selected Job Refinement

The jobs matching the search criteria as constructed in the Search panel, after pressing 'Search' button is shown in the 'Selected Jobs' list. This list can be further refined by manual addition () and/or removal () of jobs and further filtering using secondary criteria ().

In each of the CBF job lists, a range of CBF jobs can be selected by pressing and holding down Shift key on your keyboard while selecting with the mouse. Multiple non-contiguous CBF jobs can be selected by pressing and holding down Ctrl key on your keyboard while selecting with the mouse.

To add new CBF jobs to the 'Selected Jobs' list from the first list containing full set of available CBF jobs to you, select one or more CBF jobs from the first CBF job list and press () button. The selected CBF jobs from the first list will be included in the 'Selected Jobs' list. This operation makes sure that there are no duplicate jobs in the 'Selected Jobs' list.

To remove one or more CBF jobs from the 'Selected Jobs' list, select them and remove them by pressing button.

You can clear all of the CBF jobs from the 'Selected Jobs' list by pressing the button.

CBFDAP also provides further filtering of the selected data sets which cannot be expressed via clinical and provenance criteria alone. This can be accessed by pressing the button.

Secondary Search Filter Panel

Secondary search filter is most useful when the selected CBF job set too large and cumbersome to be refined by hand. By pressing the button, you come to the secondary search filter panel, where you can enter a filter expression, or select a saved filter and apply to the CBF jobs from the 'Selected Jobs' list.

For secondary search filtering, CBFDAP provides a logical expression language to build logical expressions of arbitrary complexity using the available variables ( subjectID, jobID, visitID, project, jobTag and visitDate) and operators (both relational operators and predicates).

The variables subjectID, jobID, project and jobTag are all string variables. The only numeric variable is visitID and the only date variable is visitDate. Dates are specified as strings in mm/dd/yyyy format (e.g. "03/20/2011"). The variables map to different sections of a CBF job entry as shown below.

Using Secondary Filters

To preview the effect of a filter expression entered to the "Filter" input field, press the button. The results in the "Preview" list will be filtered if there are no errors in the filter expression. Otherwise the syntax error will be shown below the filter input panel. To revert back to the original set of CBF jobs, press the button. Once you are satisfied with the filter expression, you can apply it to the CBF job data set for real by pressing the button.

Saving a Secondary Filterx

You can save filter expressions for later usage. When you click the button, the "Save Filter" panel will appear (as shown below), where you can enter a name and a description for your filter and click "Save" button to save it for later usage. The saved filter will be listed in the "Filters" panel the next time you access the secondary filter panel. To populate the filter input field with the selected filter press the button next to the 'Filters' dropdown.

Operators