Open-source tools and platforms to investigate analytical variability in neuroimaging

Researchers in brain imaging have access to a multitude of analysis tools, many of which carry out the same or similar tasks but yield different results when applied to the same data. This analytical flexibility often undermines reproducibility and raises concerns about the robustness of neuroimaging studies. However, the array of software packages to investigate and address analytical flexibility is decentralized, scattered, and not well documented. Consequently, researchers often lack the necessary information and protocols to buttress the reliability of their findings across analytical tools. This review catalogs and describes software platforms (i.e., software or computational libraries) that can be used to address result variability arising from computational pipelines and environments and explores the use of computing platforms and neuroimaging pipeline frameworks in addressing this issue. This study offers guidance to the research community on accessing, understanding, and utilizing these platforms to address brain imaging analytical flexibility. Additionally, the article provides specific recommendations tailored to different user groups, considering the tools they intend to use with these platforms and their computational constraints.