A Replicable NeuroMark Template for Whole-Brain SPECT Reveals Data-Driven Perfusion Networks and Their Alterations in Schizophrenia

Abstract Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is a highly specialized imaging modality that enables measurement of regional cerebral perfusion and, in particular, resting cerebral blood flow (rCBF). Recent technological advances have improved SPECT quantification and reliability, making it increasingly useful for studying rCBF abnormalities and perfusion–network alterations in psychiatric and neurological disorders. To characterize large-scale functional organization in SPECT data, data-driven decomposition methods such as independent component analysis (ICA) have been used to extract covarying perfusion patterns that map onto interpretable brain networks. Blind ICA provides a data-driven approach to estimate these networks without strong prior assumptions. More recently, a hybrid approach that leverages spatial priors to guide a spatially constrained ICA (sc-ICA) have been used to fully automate the ICA analysis while also providing participant-specific network estimates. While this has been reliably demonstrated in fMRI with the NeuroMark template, there is currently no comparable SPECT template. A SPECT template would enable automatic estimation of functional SPECT networks with participant-specific expressions that correspond across participants and studies. The current study introduces a new replicable NeuroMark SPECT template for estimating canonical perfusion covariance patterns (networks). We first identify replicable SPECT networks using blind ICA applied to two large sample SPECT datasets. We then demonstrate the use of the resulting template by applying sc-ICA to an independent schizophrenia dataset. In sum, this work presents and shares the first NeuroMark SPECT template and demonstrating its utility in an independent cohort, providing a scalable and robust framework for network-based analyses.