Gaussian Mixture Models and Model Selection for [18F] Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography Classification in Alzheimer's Disease.
We present a method to discover discriminative brain metabolism patterns in [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (PET) scans, facilitating the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. In the work, the term "pattern" stands for a certain brain region that characterizes a target group of patients and can be used for a classification as well as interpretation purposes. Thus, it can be understood as a so-called "region of interest (ROI)". In the literature, an ROI is often found by a given brain atlas that defines a number of brain regions, which corresponds to an anatomical approach. The present work introduces a semi-data-driven approach that is based on learning the characteristics of the given data, given some prior anatomical knowledge. A Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and model selection are combined to return a clustering of voxels that may serve for the definition of ROIs. Experiments on both an in-house dataset and data of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) suggest that the proposed approach arrives at a better diagnosis than a merely anatomical approach or conventional statistical hypothesis testing.
Institut für Informatik/I12, Technische Universität München, Garching bei München, Germany.
Rui
R
Li
Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Technische Universität München, München, Germany.
Robert
R
Perneczky
Nuklearmedizinische Klinik, Technische Universität München, München, Germany.
Igor
I
Yakushev
Nuklearmedizinische Klinik, Technische Universität München, München, Germany.
Stefan
S
Förster
Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Technische Universität München, München, Germany.
Alexander
A
Kurz
Klinik und Poliklinik für Nuklearmedizin, Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany.
Alexander
A
Drzezga
Institut für Informatik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
Stefan
S
Kramer
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18 / Q000493:pharmacokinetics*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D016011:Normal Distribution; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography / Q000379:methods*; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals / Q000493:pharmacokinetics*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18