A Method to Differentiate Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer in MR Images using Eigen Value Descriptors

Brain ventricles, CSF and cognition: a narrative review

The brain ventricles are structures that have been related to cognition since antiquity. They are essential components in the development and maintenance of brain functions. The aging process runs with the enlargement of ventricles and is related to a less selective blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier and then a more toxic cerebrospinal fluid environment. The study of brain ventricles as a biological marker of aging is promissing because they are structures easily identified in neuroimaging studies, present good inter-rater reliability, and measures of them can identify brain atrophy earlier than cortical structures. The ventricular system also plays roles in the development of dementia, since dysfunction in the clearance of beta-amyloid protein is a key mechanism in sporadic Alzheimer's disease. The morphometric and volumetric studies of the brain ventricles can help to distinguish between healthy elderly and persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. Brain ventricle data may contribute to the appropriate allocation of individuals in groups at higher risk for MCI-dementia progression in clinical trials and to measuring therapeutic responses in these studies, as well as providing differential diagnosis, such as normal pressure hydrocephalus. Here, we reviewed the pathophysiology of healthy aging and cognitive decline, focusing on the role of the choroid plexus and brain ventricles in this process.

Optimized Multiscale Entropy Model Based on Resting-State fMRI for Appraising Cognitive Performance in Healthy Elderly

Many studies have indicated that an entropy model can capture the dynamic characteristics of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rfMRI) signals. However, there are problems of subjectivity and lack of uniform standards in the selection of model parameters relying on experience when using the entropy model to analyze rfMRI. To address this issue, an optimized multiscale entropy (MSE) model was proposed to confirm the parameters objectively. All healthy elderly volunteers were divided into two groups, namely, excellent and poor, by the scores estimated through traditional scale tests before the rfMRI scan. The parameters of the MSE model were optimized with the help of sensitivity parameters such as receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and area under the ROC curve (AUC) in a comparison study between the two groups. The brain regions with significant differences in entropy values were considered biomarkers. Their entropy values were regarded as feature vectors to use as input for the probabilistic neural network in the classification of cognitive scores. Classification accuracy of 80.05% was obtained using machine learning. These results show that the optimized MSE model can accurately select the brain regions sensitive to cognitive performance and objectively select fixed parameters for MSE. This work was expected to provide the basis for entropy to test the cognitive scores of the healthy elderly.

Dual feature correlation guided multi-task learning for Alzheimer's disease prediction

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a gradually progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting cognition functions. Predicting the cognitive scores from neuroimage measures and identifying relevant imaging biomarkers are important research topics in the study of AD. Despite machine learning algorithms having many successful applications, the prediction model suffers from the so-called curse of dimensionality. Multi-task feature learning (MTFL) has helped tackle this problem incorporating the correlations among multiple clinical cognitive scores. However, MTFL neglects the inherent correlation among brain imaging measures. In order to better predict the cognitive scores and identify stable biomarkers, we first propose a generalized multi-task formulation framework that incorporates the task and feature correlation structures simultaneously. Second, we present a novel feature-aware sparsity-inducing norm (FAS-norm) penalty to incorporate a useful correlation between brain regions by exploiting correlations among features. Three multi-task learning models that incorporate the FAS-norm penalty are proposed following our framework. Finally, the algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is developed to optimize the non-smooth problems. We comprehensively evaluate the proposed models on the cross-sectional and longitudinal Alzheimer's disease neuroimaging initiative datasets. The inputs are the thickness measures and the volume measures of the cortical regions of interest. Compared with MTFL, our methods achieve an average decrease of 4.28% in overall error in the cross-sectional analysis and an average decrease of 7.97% in the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale cognitive total score longitudinal analysis. Moreover, our methods identify sensitive and stable biomarkers to physicians, such as the hippocampus, lateral ventricle, and corpus callosum.

Method of text mining based on fuzzy logic and neural network in hotel management

With the rapid economic development, people cannot do without hotels in daily life and travel. The number of hotels is increasing rapidly, and the competitiveness between hotels is gradually increasing. A reasonable and sound hotel management system has become the key to the survival and development of an enterprise. The operation and operation of a hotel generates a large amount of information and data every day. Data text mining is an important method in current information processing technology. The purpose of this article is to explore the specific application effects of text mining methods based on fuzzy logic and neural networks in hotel management. Through the design of a hotel management system based on fuzzy logic and neural network, text mining database design is carried out according to hotel management needs, and the application effect of the hotel management system is evaluated. The evaluation indicators include customer satisfaction, operating costs, management efficiency, and hotel income. The results of the study show that the hotel management system based on fuzzy logic and neural network text mining can increase customer satisfaction by 37.4%, the hotel’s comprehensive management efficiency by 28.6%, and the hotel’s revenue level by 23.5%. At the same time, through the text mining of the key information generated in the hotel operation and management, the weak links in the management system can be strengthened and the hotel operation cost can be saved. Therefore, it is feasible to apply the text mining method based on fuzzy logic and neural network to hotel management.

Systematic and Comprehensive Automated Ventricle Segmentation on Ventricle Images of the Elderly Patients: A Retrospective Study

Background and Objective: Ventricle volume is closely related to hydrocephalus, brain atrophy, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's syndrome, and other diseases. To accurately measure the volume of the ventricles for elderly patients, we use deep learning to establish a systematic and comprehensive automated ventricle segmentation framework.

Methods: The study participation included 20 normal elderly people, 20 patients with cerebral atrophy, 64 patients with normal pressure hydrocephalus, and 51 patients with acquired hydrocephalus. Second, get their imaging data through the picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) system. Then use ITK software to manually label participants' ventricular structures. Finally, extract imaging features through machine learning.

Results: This automated ventricle segmentation method can be applied not only to CT and MRI images but also to images with different scan slice thicknesses. More importantly, it produces excellent segmentation results (Dice > 0.9).

Conclusion: This automated ventricle segmentation method has wide applicability and clinical practicability. It can help clinicians find early disease, diagnose disease, understand the patient's disease progression, and evaluate the patient's treatment effect.

Modified distance regularized level set evolution for brain ventricles segmentation

Neurodegenerative disorders are commonly characterized by atrophy of the brain which is caused by neuronal loss. Ventricles are one of the prominent structures in the brain; their shape changes, due to their content, the cerebrospinal fluid. Analyzing the morphological changes of ventricles, aids in the diagnosis of atrophy, for which the region of interest needs to be separated from the background. This study presents a modified distance regularized level set evolution segmentation method, incorporating regional intensity information. The proposed method is implemented for segmenting ventricles from brain images for normal and atrophy subjects of magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography images. Results of the proposed method were compared with ground truth images and produced sensitivity in the range of 65%–90%, specificity in the range of 98%–99%, and accuracy in the range of 95%–98%. Peak signal to noise ratio and structural similarity index were also used as performance measures for determining segmentation accuracy: 95% and 0.95, respectively. The parameters of level set formulation vary for different datasets. An optimization procedure was followed to fine tune parameters. The proposed method was found to be efficient and robust against noisy images. The proposed method is adaptive and multimodal.

The Comprehensive Assessment of Neurodegeneration and Dementia: Canadian Cohort Study

BACKGROUND

The Comprehensive Assessment of Neurodegeneration and Dementia (COMPASS-ND) cohort study of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) is a national initiative to catalyze research on dementia, set up to support the research agendas of CCNA teams. This cross-country longitudinal cohort of 2310 deeply phenotyped subjects with various forms of dementia and mild memory loss or concerns, along with cognitively intact elderly subjects, will test hypotheses generated by these teams.

METHODS

The COMPASS-ND protocol, initial grant proposal for funding, fifth semi-annual CCNA Progress Report submitted to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research December 2017, and other documents supplemented by modifications made and lessons learned after implementation were used by the authors to create the description of the study provided here.

RESULTS

The CCNA COMPASS-ND cohort includes participants from across Canada with various cognitive conditions associated with or at risk of neurodegenerative diseases. They will undergo a wide range of experimental, clinical, imaging, and genetic investigation to specifically address the causes, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of these conditions in the aging population. Data derived from clinical and cognitive assessments, biospecimens, brain imaging, genetics, and brain donations will be used to test hypotheses generated by CCNA research teams and other Canadian researchers. The study is the most comprehensive and ambitious Canadian study of dementia. Initial data posting occurred in 2018, with the full cohort to be accrued by 2020.

CONCLUSION

Availability of data from the COMPASS-ND study will provide a major stimulus for dementia research in Canada in the coming years.

Characterization of Alzheimer conditions in MR images using volumetric and sagittal brainstem texture features

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Brainstem analysis in Magnetic Resonance Images is essential to detect Alzheimer's condition in the preclinical stages. In this work, an attempt has been made to segment the brainstem in sagittal (2D) and volumetric (3D) images and evaluate texture changes to differentiate Alzheimer's disease (AD) stages.

METHOD

The images obtained from a public access database are spatial normalized, skull stripped and contrast enhanced. Morphological Reconstruction based Fast and Robust Fuzzy 'C' Means technique is used to cluster the brain tissue in preprocessed images into three groups namely cerebrospinal fluid, grey matter and white matter. Brainstem is segmented from the white matter tissue using connected component labelling. Texture features from volumetric and sagittal brainstem slices are extracted and its statistical significance is evaluated.

RESULTS

Results show that the proposed approach is able to segment the brainstem from all the considered images. Variation in texture is observed to be less than 2% among sagittal brainstem slices. Additionally, midsagittal and volumetric features are correlated, suggesting that midsagittal brainstem structure gives an estimate of brainstem volume. Texture features extracted from midsagittal slice shows significant variation (p < 0.05) and is able to differentiate AD classes.

CONCLUSION

Midsagittal brainstem texture features are able to capture the changes occurring in the early stages of disease condition. As the distinction of AD in preclinical stage is complex and clinically significant, this approach could be useful for early diagnosis of the disease.