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Major depressive disorder (MDD) is considered a highly heterogeneous clinical and neurobiological mental disorder. We employed a novel layered treatment design to investigate whether cortical thickness features at baseline differentiated treatment responders from non-responders after 8 and 16 weeks of a standardized sequential antidepressant treatment. Secondary analyses examined baseline differences between MDD and controls as a replication analysis and longitudinal changes in thickness after 8 weeks of escitalopram treatment. 181 MDD and 95 healthy comparison (HC) participants were studied. After 8 weeks of escitalopram treatment (10-20 mg/d, flexible dosage), responders (>50% decrease in Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Scale score) were continued on escitalopram; non-responders received adjunctive aripiprazole (2-10 mg/d, flexible dosage). MDD participants were classified into subgroups according to their response profiles at weeks 8 and 16. Baseline group differences in cortical thickness were analyzed with FreeSurfer between HC and MDD groups as well as between response groups. Two-stage longitudinal processing was used to investigate 8-week escitalopram treatment-related changes in cortical thickness. Compared to HC, the MDD group exhibited thinner cortex in the left rostral middle frontal cortex [MNI(X,Y,Z=-29,9,54.5,-7.7); CWP=0.0002]. No baseline differences in cortical thickness were observed between responders and non-responders based on week-8 or week-16 response profile. No changes in cortical thickness was observed after 8 weeks of escitalopram monotherapy. In a two-step 16-week sequential clinical trial we found that baseline cortical thickness does not appear to be associated to clinical response to pharmacotherapy at 8 or 16 weeks., (Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Regional analysis of cortical thickness has been studied extensively in building imaging biomarkers for early detection of Alzheimer's disease but not its interregional covariation of thickness. We present novel features based on the inter-regional covariation of cortical thickness. Initially, the cortical labels of each subject are partitioned into small patches (graph nodes) by spatial k-means clustering. A graph is then constructed by establishing a link between 2 nodes if the difference in thickness between the nodes is below a certain threshold. From this binary graph, a thickness network is computed using nodal degree, betweenness, and clustering coefficient measures. Fusing them with multiple kernel learning, it is observed that thickness network features discriminate mild cognitive impairment (MCI) converters from controls (CN) with an area under curve (AUC) of 0.83, 74% sensitivity and 76% specificity on a large subset obtained from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative data set. A comparison of predictive utility in Alzheimer's disease and/or CN classification (AUC of 0.92, 80% sensitivity [SENS] and 90% specificity [SPEC]), in discriminating CN from MCI (converters and nonconverters combined; AUC of 0.75, SENS and SPEC of 64% and 73%, respectively) and in discriminating between MCI nonconverters and MCI converters (AUC of 0.68, SENS and SPEC of 65% and 64%) is also presented. ThickNet features as defined here are novel, can be derived from a single magnetic resonance imaging scan, and demonstrate the potential for the computer-aided prognostic applications., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) is considered to be a transitional stage between healthy aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD), and consists of two subtypes: single-domain aMCI (sd-aMCI) and multi-domain aMCI (md-aMCI). Individuals with md-aMCI are found to exhibit higher risk of conversion to AD. Accurate discrimination among aMCI subtypes (sd- or md-aMCI) and controls could assist in predicting future decline., Methods: We apply our novel thickness network (ThickNet) features to discriminate md-aMCI from healthy controls (NC). ThickNet features are extracted from the properties of a graph constructed from inter-regional co-variation of cortical thickness. We fuse these ThickNet features using multiple kernel learning to form a composite classifier. We apply the proposed ThickNet classifier to discriminate between md-aMCI and NC, sd-aMCI and NC and; and also between sd-aMCI and md-aMCI, using baseline T1 MR scans from the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study., Results: ThickNet classifier achieved an area under curve (AUC) of 0.74, with 70% sensitivity and 69% specificity in discriminating md-aMCI from healthy controls. The same classifier resulted in AUC = 0.67 and 0.67 for sd-aMCI/NC and sd-aMCI/md-aMCI classification experiments respectively., Conclusions: The proposed ThickNet classifier demonstrated potential for discriminating md-aMCI from controls, and in discriminating sd-aMCI from md-aMCI, using cortical features from baseline MRI scan alone. Use of the proposed novel ThickNet features demonstrates significant improvements over previous experiments using cortical thickness alone. This result may offer the possibility of early detection of Alzheimer's disease via improved discrimination of aMCI subtypes.