The Feasibility of Differentiating Lewy Body Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease by Deep Learning Using ECD SPECT Images

Classification Prediction of Alzheimer's Disease and Vascular Dementia Using Physiological Data and ECD SPECT Images

Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD) are the two most common forms of dementia. However, their neuropsychological and pathological features often overlap, making it difficult to distinguish between AD and VaD. In addition to clinical consultation and laboratory examinations, clinical dementia diagnosis in Taiwan will also include Tc-99m-ECD SPECT imaging examination. Through machine learning and deep learning technology, we explored the feasibility of using the above clinical practice data to distinguish AD and VaD. We used the physiological data (33 features) and Tc-99m-ECD SPECT images of 112 AD patients and 85 VaD patients in the Taiwanese Nuclear Medicine Brain Image Database to train the classification model. The results, after filtering by the number of SVM RFE 5-fold features, show that the average accuracy of physiological data in distinguishing AD/VaD is 81.22% and the AUC is 0.836; the average accuracy of training images using the Inception V3 model is 85% and the AUC is 0.95. Finally, Grad-CAM heatmap was used to visualize the areas of concern of the model and compared with the SPM analysis method to further understand the differences. This research method can quickly use machine learning and deep learning models to automatically extract image features based on a small amount of general clinical data to objectively distinguish AD and VaD.

Diagnostic Efficacy and Clinical Relevance of Artificial Intelligence in Detecting Cognitive Decline

Cognitive impairment is an age-associated disorder of increasing prevalence as the aging population continues to grow. Classified based on the level of cognitive decline, memory, function, and capacity to conduct activities of daily living, cognitive impairment ranges from mild cognitive impairment to dementia. When considering the insidious nature of the etiologies responsible for varying degrees of cognitive impairment, early diagnosis may provide a clinical benefit through the facilitation of early treatment. Typical diagnosis relies heavily on evaluation in a primary care setting. However, there is evidence that other diagnostic tools may aid in an earlier diagnosis of the different underlying pathologies responsible for cognitive impairment. Artificial intelligence represents a new intersecting field with healthcare that may aid in the early detection of neurodegenerative disorders. When assessing the role of AI in detecting cognitive decline, it is important to consider both the diagnostic efficacy of AI algorithms and the clinical relevance and impact of early interventions as a result of early detection. Thus, this review highlights promising investigations and developments in the space of artificial intelligence and healthcare and their potential to impact patient outcomes.

Artificial Intelligence Models in the Diagnosis of Adult-Onset Dementia Disorders: A Review

Background: The progressive aging of populations, primarily in the industrialized western world, is accompanied by the increased incidence of several non-transmittable diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases and adult-onset dementia disorders. To stimulate adequate interventions, including treatment and preventive measures, an early, accurate diagnosis is necessary. Conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) represents a technique quite common for the diagnosis of neurological disorders. Increasing evidence indicates that the association of artificial intelligence (AI) approaches with MRI is particularly useful for improving the diagnostic accuracy of different dementia types. Objectives: In this work, we have systematically reviewed the characteristics of AI algorithms in the early detection of adult-onset dementia disorders, and also discussed its performance metrics. Methods: A document search was conducted with three databases, namely PubMed (Medline), Web of Science, and Scopus. The search was limited to the articles published after 2006 and in English only. The screening of the articles was performed using quality criteria based on the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale (NOS) rating. Only papers with an NOS score 7 were considered for further review. Results: The document search produced a count of 1876 articles and, because of duplication, 1195 papers were not considered. Multiple screenings were performed to assess quality criteria, which yielded 29 studies. All the selected articles were further grouped based on different attributes, including study type, type of AI model used in the identification of dementia, performance metrics, and data type. Conclusions: The most common adult-onset dementia disorders occurring were Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia. AI techniques associated with MRI resulted in increased diagnostic accuracy ranging from 73.3% to 99%. These findings suggest that AI should be associated with conventional MRI techniques to obtain a precise and early diagnosis of dementia disorders occurring in old age.

Distinguishing Lewy Body Dementia from Alzheimer's Disease using Machine Learning on Heterogeneous Data: A Feasibility Study

Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) is the second most common form of dementia, but diagnostic markers for DLB can be expensive and inaccessible, and many cases of DLB are undiagnosed. This work applies machine learning techniques to determine the feasibility of distinguishing DLB from Alzheimer's Disease (AD) using heterogeneous data features. The Repeated Incremental Pruning to Produce Error Reduction (RIPPER) algorithm was first applied using a Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation protocol to a dataset comprising DLB and AD cases. Then, interpretable association rule-based diagnostic classifiers were obtained for distinguishing DLB from AD. The various diagnostic classifiers generated by this process had high accuracy over the whole dataset (mean accuracy of 94%). The mean accuracy in classifying their out-of-sample case was 80.5%. Every classifier generated consisted of very simple structure, each using 1-2 classification rules and 1-3 data features. As a group, the classifiers were heterogeneous and used several different data features. In particular, some of the classifiers used very simple and inexpensive diagnostic features, yet with high diagnostic accuracy. This work suggests that opportunities may exist for incorporating accessible diagnostic assessments while improving diagnostic rate for DLB. Clinical Relevance- Simple and interpretable high-performing machine learning algorithms identified a variety of readily available clinical assessments for differential diagnosis of dementia offering the opportunities to incorporate various simple and inexpensive screening tests for DLB and addressing the problem of DLB underdiagnosis.