MICCAI 2013 - LNCS 8149-8151

Predictive Models of Resting State Networks for Assessment of Altered Functional Connectivity in MCI

Xi Jiang¹, Dajiang Zhu¹, Kaiming Li², Tuo Zhang^{3, 1}, Dinggang Shen⁴, Lei Guo³, and Tianming Liu¹

¹Cortical Architecture Imaging and Discovery Lab, Department of Computer Science and Bioimaging Research Center, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

²Biomedical Imaging Technology Center, Emory University/Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

³School of Automation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China

⁴Department of Radiology, UNC Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Abstract. Due to the difficulties in establishing accurate correspondences of brain network nodes across individual subjects, systematic elucidation of possible functional connectivity (FC) alterations in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) compared with normal controls (NC) is a challenging problem. To address this challenge, in this paper, we develop and apply novel predictive models of resting state networks (RSNs) learned from multimodal resting state fMRI (R-fMRI) and DTI data to assess large-scale FC alterations in MCI. Our rationale is that some RSNs in MCI are substantially altered and can hardly be directly compared with those in NC. Instead, structural landmarks derived from DTI data are much more consistent and correspondent across MCI/NC brains, and therefore can be employed to encode RSNs in NC and serve as the predictive models of RSNs for MCI. To derive these predictive models, RSNs in NC are constructed by group-wise ICA clustering and employed to functionally annotate corresponding structural landmarks. Afterwards, these functionally-annotated structural landmarks are predicted in MCI based on DTI data and used to assess FC alterations in MCI. Experimental results demonstrated that the predictive models of RSNs are effective and can comprehensively reveal widespread FC alterations in MCI.

Keywords: mild cognitive impairment (MCI), resting state networks, predictive models, functional connectivity (FC)

LNCS 8150, p. 674 ff.

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