Deep normative modelling reveals insights into early-stage Alzheimer's disease using multi-modal neuroimaging data.

Journal: Alzheimer's research & therapy
PMID:

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Exploring the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is crucial for timely intervention to help manage symptoms and set expectations for affected individuals and their families. However, the study of the early stages of AD involves analysing heterogeneous disease cohorts which may present challenges for some modelling techniques. This heterogeneity stems from the diverse nature of AD itself, as well as the inclusion of undiagnosed or 'at-risk' AD individuals or the presence of comorbidities which differentially affect AD biomarkers within the cohort. Normative modelling is an emerging technique for studying heterogeneous disorders that can quantify how brain imaging-based measures of individuals deviate from a healthy population. The normative model provides a statistical description of the 'normal' range that can be used at subject level to detect deviations, which may relate to pathological effects.

Authors

  • Ana Lawry Aguila
    Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, UCL Hawkes Institute, University College London (UCL), London, UK. acaguila@mgh.harvard.edu.
  • Luigi Lorenzini
    Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Amsterdam University Medical Center, Amsterdam, 1081 HV, The Netherlands.
  • Mohammed Janahi
    Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, UCL Hawkes Institute, University College London (UCL), London, UK.
  • Frederik Barkhof
    MS Center Amsterdam, Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam Neuroscience, Amsterdam UMC location VUmc, the Netherlands.
  • Andre Altmann
    Centre for Medical Image Computing, University College London, London, UK.