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Estimating Gender and Age from Brain Structural MRI of Children and Adolescents: A 3D Convolutional Neural Network Multitask Learning Model.

ABSTRACT: Despite recent advances, assessing biological measurements for neuropsychiatric disorders is still a challenge, where confounding variables such as gender and age (as a proxy for neurodevelopment) play an important role. This study explores brain structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) from two public data sets (ABIDE-II and ADHD-200) with healthy control (HC, N = 894), autism spectrum disorder (ASD, N = 251), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, N = 357) individuals. We used gray and white matter preprocessed via voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to train a 3D convolutional neural network with a multitask learning strategy to estimate gender, age, and mental health status from structural brain differences. Gradient-based methods were employed to generate attention maps, providing clinically relevant identification of most representative brain regions for models' decision-making. This approach resulted in satisfactory predictions for gender and age. ADHD-200-trained models, evaluated in 10-fold cross-validation procedures on test set, obtained a mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.43 years (±0.22 SD) for age prediction and an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.85 (±0.04 SD) for gender classification. In out-of-sample validation, the best-performing ADHD-200 models satisfactorily predicted age (MAE = 1.57 years) and gender (AUC = 0.89) in the ABIDE-II data set. The models' accuracy was in line with the current state-of-the-art machine learning applications in neuroimaging. Key regions for models' accuracy were presented as a meaningful graphical output. New implementations, such as the use of VBM along with a 3D convolutional neural network multitask learning model and a brain imaging graphical output, reinforce the relevance of the proposed workflow.

SUBMITTER: Mendes SL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8172319 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Conventionally, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been used to identify and detect thorax diseases on chest x-ray images. To identify thorax diseases, CNNs typically learn two types of information: disease-specific features and generic anatomical features. CNNs focus on disease-specific features while ignoring the rest of the anatomical features during their operation. There is no evidence that generic anatomical features improve or worsen the performance of convolutional neural networks for thorax disease classification in the current research. As a consequence, the relevance of general anatomical features in boosting the performance of CNNs for thorax disease classification is investigated in this study. We employ a dual-stream CNN model to learn anatomical features before training the model for thorax disease classification. The dual-stream technique is used to compel the model to learn structural information because initial layers of CNNs often learn features of edges and boundaries. As a result, a dual-stream model with minimal layers learns structural and anatomical features as a priority. To make the technique more comprehensive, we first train the model to identify gender and age and then classify thorax diseases using the information acquired. Only when the model learns the anatomical features can it detect gender and age. We also use Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) and Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) to pre-process the training data, which suppresses disease-related information while amplifying general anatomical features, allowing the model to acquire anatomical features considerably faster. Finally, the model that was earlier trained for gender and age detection is retrained for thorax disease classification using original data. The proposed technique increases the performance of convolutional neural networks for thorax disease classification, as per experiments on the Chest X-ray14 dataset. We can also see the significant parts of the image that contribute more for gender, age, and a certain thorax disease by visualizing the features. The proposed study achieves two goals: first, it produces novel gender and age identification results on chest X-ray images that may be used in biometrics, forensics, and anthropology, and second, it highlights the importance of general anatomical features in thorax disease classification. In comparison to state-of-the-art results, the proposed work also produces competitive results.

Project description:BackgroundRecently, deep learning technologies have rapidly expanded into medical image analysis, including both disease detection and classification. As far as we know, migraine is a disabling and common neurological disorder, typically characterized by unilateral, throbbing and pulsating headaches. Unfortunately, a large number of migraineurs do not receive the accurate diagnosis when using traditional diagnostic criteria based on the guidelines of the International Headache Society. As such, there is substantial interest in developing automated methods to assist in the diagnosis of migraine.MethodsTo the best of our knowledge, no studies have evaluated the potential of deep learning technologies in assisting with the classification of migraine patients. Here, we used deep learning methods in combination with three functional measures (the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations, regional homogeneity and regional functional correlation strength) based on rs-fMRI data to distinguish not only between migraineurs and healthy controls, but also between the two subtypes of migraine. We employed 21 migraine patients without aura, 15 migraineurs with aura, and 28 healthy controls.ResultsCompared with the traditional support vector machine classifier, which has an accuracy of 83.67%, our Inception module-based convolutional neural network approach showed a significant improvement in classification output (over 86.18%). Our data also indicate that the Inception module-based CNN performs better than the AlexNet-based CNN (Inception module-based CNN reached an accuracy of 99.25%). Finally, we also found that regional functional correlation strength (RFCS) could be regarded as the optimum input out of the three indices (ALFF, ReHo, RFCS).ConclusionsOverall, our study shows that combining the three functional measures of rs-fMRI with deep learning classification is a powerful method to distinguish between migraineurs and healthy individuals. Our data also highlight that deep learning-based frameworks could be used to develop more complicated models or systems to aid in clinical decision making in the future.

Project description:External-beam radiotherapy followed by high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy is the standard-of-care for treating gynecologic cancers. The enhanced soft-tissue contrast provided by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) makes it a valuable imaging modality for diagnosing and treating these cancers. However, in contrast to computed tomography (CT) imaging, the appearance of the brachytherapy catheters, through which radiation sources are inserted to reach the cancerous tissue later on, is often variable across images. This paper reports, for the first time, a new deep-learning-based method for fully automatic segmentation of multiple closely spaced brachytherapy catheters in intraoperative MRI. Represented in the data are 50 gynecologic cancer patients treated by MRI-guided HDR brachytherapy. For each patient, a single intraoperative MRI was used. 826 catheters in the images were manually segmented by an expert radiation physicist who is also a trained radiation oncologist. The number of catheters in a patient ranged between 10 and 35. A deep 3D convolutional neural network (CNN) model was developed and trained. In order to make the learning process more robust, the network was trained 5 times, each time using a different combination of shown patients. Finally, each test case was processed by the five networks and the final segmentation was generated by voting on the obtained five candidate segmentations. 4-fold validation was executed and all the patients were segmented. An average distance error of 2.0??±??3.4?mm was achieved. False positive and false negative catheters were 6.7% and 1.5% respectively. Average Dice score was equal to 0.60??±??0.17. The algorithm is available for use in the open source software platform 3D Slicer allowing for wide scale testing and research discussion. In conclusion, to the best of our knowledge, fully automatic segmentation of multiple closely spaced catheters from intraoperative MR images was achieved for the first time in gynecological brachytherapy.

Project description:PURPOSE:This study demonstrated a magnetic resonance (MR) signal multitask learning method for three-dimensional (3D) simultaneous segmentation and relaxometry of human brain tissues. MATERIALS AND METHODS:A 3D inversion-prepared balanced steady-state free precession sequence was used for acquiring in vivo multicontrast brain images. The deep neural network contained three residual blocks, and each block had 8 fully connected layers with sigmoid activation, layer norm, and 256 neurons in each layer. Online-synthesized MR signal evolutions and labels were used to train the neural network batch-by-batch. Empirically defined ranges of T1 and T2 values for the normal gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) were used as the prior knowledge. MRI brain experiments were performed on three healthy volunteers. The mean and standard deviation for the T1 and T2 values in vivo were reported and compared to literature values. Additional animal (N = 6) and prostate patient (N = 1) experiments were performed to compare the estimated T1 and T2 values with those from gold standard methods and to demonstrate clinical applications of the proposed method. RESULTS:In animal validation experiment, the differences/errors (mean difference ± standard deviation of difference) between the T1 and T2 values estimated from the proposed method and the ground truth were 113 ± 486 and 154 ± 512 ms for T1, and 5 ± 33 and 7 ± 41 ms for T2, respectively. In healthy volunteer experiments (N = 3), whole brain segmentation and relaxometry were finished within ~ 5 s. The estimated apparent T1 and T2 maps were in accordance with known brain anatomy, and not affected by coil sensitivity variation. Gray matter, white matter, and CSF were successfully segmented. The deep neural network can also generate synthetic T1- and T2-weighted images. CONCLUSION:The proposed multitask learning method can directly generate brain apparent T1 and T2 maps, as well as synthetic T1- and T2-weighted images, in conjunction with segmentation of gray matter, white matter, and CSF.

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Estimating Gender and Age from Brain Structural MRI of Children and Adolescents: A 3D Convolutional Neural Network Multitask Learning Model.

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