title: Description and classification of normal and pathological aging processes based on brain magnetic resonance imaging morphology measures.
abstract: We present a discrete compactness (DC) index, together with a classification scheme, based both on the size and shape features extracted from brain volumes, to determine different aging stages: healthy controls (HC), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and Alzheimer's disease (AD). A set of 30 brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes for each group was segmented and two indices were measured for several structures: three-dimensional DC and normalized volumes (NVs). The discrimination power of these indices was determined by means of the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic, where the proposed compactness index showed an average AUC of 0.7 for HC versus MCI comparison, 0.9 for HC versus AD separation, and 0.75 for MCI versus AD groups. In all cases, this index outperformed the discrimination capability of the NV. Using selected features from the set of DC and NV measures, three support vector machines were optimized and validated for the pairwise separation of the three classes. Our analysis shows classification rates of up to 98.3% between HC and AD, 85% between HC and MCI, and 93.3% for MCI and AD separation. These results outperform those reported in the literature and demonstrate the viability of the proposed morphological indices to classify different aging stages.
authors.affiliation: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana , Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, Iztapalapa, México D.F. 09340, Mexico.
authors.forename: Jorge Luis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Perez-Gonzalez
authors.affiliation: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana , Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, Iztapalapa, México D.F. 09340, Mexico.
authors.forename: Oscar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Yanez-Suarez
authors.affiliation: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México , IIMAS, Department of Computer Science, México D.F. 04510, Mexico.
authors.forename: Ernesto
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bribiesca
authors.affiliation: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México , Biomedical Imaging Lab. Centro de Ciencias Aplicadas y Desarrollo Tecnológico, México D.F. 04510, Mexico.
authors.forename: Fernando Arámbula
authors.initials: FA
authors.lastname: Cosío
authors.affiliation: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana , Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, Iztapalapa, México D.F. 09340, Mexico.
authors.forename: Juan Ramón
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Jiménez
authors.affiliation: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana , Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, Iztapalapa, México D.F. 09340, Mexico.
authors.forename: Veronica
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Medina-Bañuelos
keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; discrete compactness; mild cognitive impairment; normalized volume; support vector machine