Identification of voxel-based texture abnormalities as new biomarkers for schizophrenia and major depressive patients using layer-wise relevance propagation on deep learning decisions.

Journal: Psychiatry research. Neuroimaging
Published Date:

Abstract

Non-segmented MRI brain images are used for the identification of new Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) biomarkers able to differentiate between schizophrenic patients (SCZ), major depressive patients (MD) and healthy controls (HC). Brain texture measures such as entropy and contrast, capturing the neighboring variation of MRI voxel intensities, were computed and fed into deep learning technique for group classification. Layer-wise relevance was applied for the localization of the classification results. Texture feature map of non-segmented brain MRI scans were extracted from 141 SCZ, 103 MD and 238 HC. The gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) was calculated on a voxel-by-voxel basis in a cube of voxels. Deep learning tested if texture feature map could predict diagnostic group membership of three classes under a binary classification (SCZ vs. HC, MD vs. HC, SCZ vs. MD). The method was applied in a repeated nested cross-validation scheme and cross-validated feature selection. The regions with the highest relevance (positive/negative) are presented. The method was applied on non-segmented images reducing the computation complexity and the error associated with segmentation process.

Authors

  • A I Korda
    Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Lübeck (UKSH), Ratzeburger Allee 160, 23562 Lübeck, Germany. Electronic address: alexandra.korda@uni-luebeck.de.
  • A Ruef
    Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Ludwig Maximilian University, Nussbaumstr. 7, 80336 Munich, Germany.
  • S Neufang
    Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Moorenstr. 5, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
  • C Davatzikos
    Section of Biomedical Image Analysis, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
  • S Borgwardt
    Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Lübeck (UKSH), Ratzeburger Allee 160, 23562 Lübeck, Germany.
  • E M Meisenzahl
    Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Moorenstr. 5, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
  • N Koutsouleris
    Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Ludwig Maximilian University, Nussbaumstr. 7, 80336 Munich, Germany.