Machine learning to investigate superficial white matter integrity in early multiple sclerosis.
| Publication Type | Academic Article |
| Authors | Buyukturkoglu K, Vergara C, Fuentealba V, Tozlu C, Dahan J, Carroll B, Kuceyeski A, Riley C, Sumowski J, Oliva C, Sitaram R, Guevara P, Leavitt V |
| Journal | J Neuroimaging |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pagination | 36-47 |
| Date Published | 09/17/2021 |
| ISSN | 1552-6569 |
| Keywords | Multiple Sclerosis, White Matter |
| Abstract | BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: This study aims todetermine the sensitivity of superficial white matter (SWM) integrity as a metric to distinguish early multiple sclerosis (MS) patients from healthy controls (HC). METHODS: Fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity (MD) values from SWM bundles across the cortex and major deep white matter (DWM) tracts were extracted from 29 early MS patients and 31 age- and sex-matched HC. Thickness of 68 cortical regions and resting-state functional-connectivity (RSFC) among them were calculated. The distribution of structural and functional metrics between groups were compared using Wilcoxon rank-sum test. Utilizing a machine learning method (adaptive boosting), 6 models were built based on: 1-SWM, 2-DWM, 3-SWM and DWM, 4-cortical thickness, or 5-RSFC measures. In model 6, all features from previous models were incorporated. The models were trained with nested 5-folds cross-validation. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUCroc ) values were calculated to evaluate classification performance of each model. Permutation tests were used to compare the AUCroc values. RESULTS: Patients had higher MD in SWM bundles including insula, inferior frontal, orbitofrontal, superior and medial temporal, and pre- and post-central cortices (p < .05). No group differences were found for any other MRI metric. The model incorporating SWM and DWM features provided the best classification (AUCroc = 0.75). The SWM model provided higher AUCroc (0.74), compared to DWM (0.63), cortical thickness (0.67), RSFC (0.63), and all-features (0.68) models (p < .001 for all). CONCLUSION: Our results reveal a non-random pattern of SWM abnormalities at early stages of MS even before pronounced structural and functional alterations emerge. |
| DOI | 10.1111/jon.12934 |
| PubMed ID | 34532924 |
| PubMed Central ID | PMC8752496 |