Multi-scale graph-based grading for Alzheimer's disease prediction

[EN] The prediction of subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who will progress to Alzheimer¿s disease (AD) is clinically relevant, and may above all have a significant impact on accelerating the development of new treatments. In this paper, we present a new MRI-based biomarker that enables us to accurately predict conversion of MCI subjects to AD. In order to better capture the AD signature, we introduce two main contributions. First, we present a new graph-based grading framework to combine inter-subject similarity features and intra-subject variability features. This framework involves patch-based grading of anatomical structures and graph-based modeling of structure alteration relationships. Second, we propose an innovative multiscale brain analysis to capture alterations caused by AD at different anatomical levels. Based on a cascade of classifiers, this multiscale approach enables the analysis of alterations of whole brain structures and hippocampus subfields at the same time. During our experiments using the ADNI-1 dataset, the proposed multiscale graph-based grading method obtained an area under the curve (AUC) of 81% to predict conversion of MCI subjects to AD within three years. Moreover, when combined with cognitive scores, the proposed method obtained 85% of AUC. These results are competitive in comparison to state-of-the-art methods evaluated on the same dataset.
This work benefited from the support of the project DeepvolBrain of the French National Research Agency (ANR-18-CE450013). This study was achieved within the context of the Laboratory of Excellence TRAIL ANR-10-LABX-57 for the BigDataBrain project. Moreover, we thank the Investments for the future Program IdEx Bordeaux (ANR-10-IDEX-03-02, HL-MRI Project), Cluster of excellence CPU and the CNRS. Finally, this work was also supported by the NIH grants R01-NS094456 and U01-NS106845. Data collection and sharing for this project was funded by the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) (National Institutes of Health Grant U01-AG024904) and by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and through generous contributions from the following: AbbVie, Alzheimer's Biogen; Bristol-Myes Squibb Company; CereSpir, Inc.; Cogstate; Eisai Inc.; Elan Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Eli Lilly and Company; EuroImmun; F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd and its affiliated company Genentech, Inc.; Fujirebio; GE Healthcare; IXICO Ltd.; Janssen Pharmaceutical Research & Development LLC.; NeuroRx Research; Neurotrack Technologies; Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation; Pfizer Inc.; Piramal Imaging; Servier; Takeda Pharmaceutical providing funds to support ADNI clinical sites in Canada. Private sector contributions are facilitated by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (www.fnih.org).The grantee organization is the Northern California Institute of Research and Education, and the study is coordinated by the Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute at the University of Southern California. ADNI data are disseminated by the Laboratory for Neuro Imaging at the University of Southern California.