Why are psychiatric imaging methods clinically unreliable? Conclusions and practical guidelines for authors, editors and reviewers

doi:10.1186/1744-9081-8-46

Behav Brain Funct. 2012; 8: 46.

Published online 2012 September 1. doi: 10.1186/1744-9081-8-46

PMCID: PMC3478220

Why are psychiatric imaging methods clinically unreliable? Conclusions and practical guidelines for authors, editors and reviewers

Stefan Borgwardt,¹ Joaquim Radua,² Andrea Mechelli,² and Paolo Fusar-Poli²

¹Department of Psychiatry, University of Basel, Petersgraben 4, Basel, CH 4031, Switzerland

²Department of Psychosis Studies, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, De Crespigny Park, London, SE5 8AF, UK

Corresponding author.

Stefan Borgwardt: sborgwardt/at/uhbs.ch; Joaquim Radua: joaquim.radua/at/kcl.ac.uk; Andrea Mechelli: andrea.mechelli/at/kcl.ac.uk; Paolo Fusar-Poli: paolo.fusar-poli/at/kcl.ac.uk

Received May 8, 2012; Accepted August 24, 2012.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Abstract

No reliable anatomical or functional alterations have been confirmed in psychiatric neuroimaging; however it can become reliable with translational impact on clinical practice when considering crucial methodological issues. We provide guidelines to authors, editors and reviewers in the implementation/evaluation of neuroimaging studies to bend neuroimaging to be more than basic neuroscience.

Keywords: Guidelines, Neuroimaging, Magnetic resonance imaging, Region-of-interest, Voxel-based morphometry, Meta-analyses

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