This article has been written in response to Dr. Fred L. Bookstein's articl
e entitled "Voxel-Based Morphometry" Should Not Be Used with Imperfectly Re
gistered Images' in this issue of NeuroImage. We will address three main is
sues: (i) Dr. Bookstein appears to have misunderstood the objective of voxe
l-based morphometry (VBM) and the nature of the continuum we referred to. (
ii) We agree with him when he states that findings from VBM can pertain to
systematic registration errors during spatial normalization. (iii) His argu
ment about voxelwise tests on smooth data holds in the absence of error var
iance, but is of no consequence when using actual data. We first review the
tenets of VBM, paying particular attention to the relationship between VBM
and tensor-based morphometry. The last two sections of this response deal
with the specific concerns raised by Dr. Bookstein. (C) 2001 Academic Press
.