PRoNTo: Pattern Recognition for Neuroimaging Toolbox

PRoNTo (Pattern Recognition for Neuroimaging Toolbox) is a software toolbox based on pattern recognition techniques for the analysis of neuroimaging data. Statistical pattern recognition is a field within the area of machine learning which is concerned with automatic discovery of regularities in data through the use of computer algorithms, and with the use of these regularities to take actions such as classifying the data into different categories. In PRoNTo, brain scans are treated as spatial patterns and statistical learning models are used to identify statistical properties of the data that can be used to discriminate between experimental conditions or groups of subjects (classification models) or to predict a continuous measure (regression models).

PRoNTo aims to facilitate the interaction between machine learning and neuroimaging communities. On one hand, the machine learning community can contribute to the toolbox with novel machine learning models. On the other hand, the toolbox provides a variety of tools for the neuroscience and clinical neuroscience communities, enabling them to ask new questions that cannot be easily investigated using existing software and analysis tools.

PRoNTo is distributed for free as copyright software under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. The development of the toolbox has been supported by the PASCAL Harvest framework and The Wellcome Trust.