Threshold-free cluster enhancement: Addressing problems of smoothing, threshold dependence and localisation in cluster inference

Many image enhancement and thresholding techniques make use of spatial neighbourhood information to boost belief in extended areas of signal. The most common such approach in neuroimaging is cluster-based thresholding, which is often more sensitive than voxel-wise thresholding. However, a limitation is the need to define the initial cluster-forming threshold. This threshold is arbitrary, and yet its exact choice can have a large impact on the...