scholarly journals The Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease: An Ensemble Approach

Author(s):  
Jingyan Qiu ◽  
Linjian Li ◽  
Yida Liu ◽  
Yingjun Ou ◽  
Yubei Lin

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most common forms of dementia. The early stage of the disease is defined as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Recent research results have shown the prospect of combining Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanning of the brain and deep learning to diagnose AD. However, the CNN deep learning model requires a large scale of samples for training. Transfer learning is the key to enable a model with high accuracy by using limited data for training. In this paper, DenseNet and Inception V4, which were pre-trained on the ImageNet dataset to obtain initialization values of weights, are, respectively, used for the graphic classification task. The ensemble method is employed to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the classification models and the result of different models are eventually processed through probability-based fusion. Our experiments were completely conducted on the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) public dataset. Only the ternary classification is made due to a higher demand for medical detection and diagnosis. The accuracies of AD/MCI/Normal Control (NC) of different models are estimated in this paper. The results of the experiments showed that the accuracies of the method achieved a maximum of 92.65%, which is a remarkable outcome compared with the accuracies of the state-of-the-art methods.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jafar Zamani ◽  
Ali Sadr ◽  
Amir-Homayoun Javadi

AbstractBackgroundAlzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that leads to anatomical atrophy, as evidenced by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Automated segmentation methods are developed to help with the segmentation of different brain areas. However, their reliability has yet to be fully investigated. To have a more comprehensive understanding of the distribution of changes in AD, as well as investigating the reliability of different segmentation methods, in this study we compared volumes of cortical and subcortical brain segments, using automated segmentation methods in more than 60 areas between AD and healthy controls (HC).MethodsA total of 44 MRI images (22 AD and 22 HC, 50% females) were taken from the minimal interval resonance imaging in Alzheimer’s disease (MIRIAD) dataset. HIPS, volBrain, CAT and BrainSuite segmentation methods were used for the subfields of hippocampus, and the rest of the brain.ResultsWhile HIPS, volBrain and CAT showed strong conformity with the past literature, BrainSuite misclassified several brain areas. Additionally, the volume of the brain areas that successfully discriminated between AD and HC showed a correlation with mini mental state examination (MMSE) scores. The two methods of volBrain and CAT showed a very strong correlation. These two methods, however, did not correlate with BrainSuite.ConclusionOur results showed that automated segmentation methods HIPS, volBrain and CAT can be used in the classification of AD and HC. This is an indication that such methods can be used to inform researchers and clinicians of underlying mechanisms and progression of AD.


Author(s):  
Adwait Patil

Abstract: Alzheimer’s disease is one of the neurodegenerative disorders. It initially starts with innocuous symptoms but gradually becomes severe. This disease is so dangerous because there is no treatment, the disease is detected but typically at a later stage. So it is important to detect Alzheimer at an early stage to counter the disease and for a probable recovery for the patient. There are various approaches currently used to detect symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at an early stage. The fuzzy system approach is not widely used as it heavily depends on expert knowledge but is quite efficient in detecting AD as it provides a mathematical foundation for interpreting the human cognitive processes. Another more accurate and widely accepted approach is the machine learning detection of AD stages which uses machine learning algorithms like Support Vector Machines (SVMs) , Decision Tree , Random Forests to detect the stage depending on the data provided. The final approach is the Deep Learning approach using multi-modal data that combines image , genetic data and patient data using deep models and then uses the concatenated data to detect the AD stage more efficiently; this method is obscure as it requires huge volumes of data. This paper elaborates on all the three approaches and provides a comparative study about them and which method is more efficient for AD detection. Keywords: Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), Fuzzy System , Machine Learning , Deep Learning , Multimodal data


Cells ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 3261
Author(s):  
Xiao Liu ◽  
Qian Zhou ◽  
Jia-He Zhang ◽  
Xiaoying Wang ◽  
Xiumei Gao ◽  
...  

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common form of dementia, is characterized by amyloid-β (Aβ) accumulation, microglia-associated neuroinflammation, and synaptic loss. The detailed neuropathologic characteristics in early-stage AD, however, are largely unclear. We evaluated the pathologic brain alterations in young adult App knock-in model AppNL-G-F mice at 3 and 6 months of age, which corresponds to early-stage AD. At 3 months of age, microglia expression in the cortex and hippocampus was significantly decreased. By the age of 6 months, the number and function of the microglia increased, accompanied by progressive amyloid-β deposition, synaptic dysfunction, neuroinflammation, and dysregulation of β-catenin and NF-κB signaling pathways. The neuropathologic changes were more severe in female mice than in male mice. Oral administration of dioscin, a natural product, ameliorated the neuropathologic alterations in young AppNL-G-F mice. Our findings revealed microglia-based sex-differential neuropathologic changes in a mouse model of early-stage AD and therapeutic efficacy of dioscin on the brain lesions. Dioscin may represent a potential treatment for AD.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Bhargy Sharma ◽  
Konstantin Pervushin

Drug formulations and suitable methods for their detection play a very crucial role in the development of therapeutics towards degenerative neurological diseases. For diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive clinical technique suitable for early diagnosis. In this review, we will discuss the different experimental conditions which can push MRI as the technique of choice and the gold standard for early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Here, we describe and compare various techniques for administration of nanoparticles targeted to the brain and suitable formulations of nanoparticles for use as magnetically active therapeutic probes in drug delivery targeting the brain. We explore different physiological pathways involved in the transport of such nanoparticles for successful entry in the brain. In our lab, we have used different formulations of iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) and protein nanocages as contrast agents in anatomical MRI of an Alzheimer’s disease (AD) brain. We compare these coatings and their benefits to provide the best contrast in addition to biocompatibility properties to be used as sustainable drug-release systems. In the later sections, the contrast enhancement techniques in MRI studies are discussed. Examples of contrast-enhanced imaging using advanced pulse sequences are discussed with the main focus on important studies in the field of neurological diseases. In addition, T1 contrast agents such as gadolinium chelates are compared with the T2 contrast agents mainly made of superparamagnetic inorganic metal nanoparticles.


2013 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.V. Alessenko

The review discusses the functional role of sphingolipids in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. Certain evidence exist that the imbalance of sphingolipids such as sphingomyelin, ceramide, sphingosine, sphingosine-1-phosphate and galactosylceramide in the brain of animals and humans, in the cerebrospinal fluid and blood plasma of patients with Alzheimer's disease play a crucial role in neuronal function by regulating growth, differentiation and cell death in CNS. Activation of sphingomyelinase, which leads to the accumulation of the proapoptotic agent, ceramide, can be considered as a new mechanism for AD and may be a prerequisite for the treatment of this disease by using drugs that inhibit sphingomyelinase activity. The role of sphingolipids as biomarkers for the diagnosis of the early stage of Alzheimer's disease and monitoring the effectiveness of treatment with new drugs is discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shan-Shan Wang ◽  
Zi-Kai Liu ◽  
Jing-Jing Liu ◽  
Qing Cheng ◽  
Yan-Xia Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Discovery of early-stage biomarkers is a long-sought goal of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) diagnosis. Age is the greatest risk factor for most AD and accumulating evidence suggests that age-dependent elevation of asparaginyl endopeptidase (AEP) in the brain may represent a new biological marker for predicting AD. However, this speculation remains to be explored with an appropriate assay method because mammalian AEP exists in many organs and the level of AEP in body fluid isn’t proportional to its concentration in brain parenchyma. To this end, we here modified gold nanoparticle (AuNPs) into an AEP-responsive imaging probe and choose transgenic APPswe/PS1dE9 (APP/PS1) mice as an animal model of AD. Our aim is to determine whether imaging of brain AEP can be used to predict AD pathology. Results This AEP-responsive imaging probe AuNPs-Cy5.5-A&C consisted of two particles, AuNPs-Cy5.5-AK and AuNPs-Cy5.5-CABT, which were respectively modified with Ala–Ala–Asn–Cys–Lys (AK) and 2-cyano-6-aminobenzothiazole (CABT). We showed that AuNPs-Cy5.5-A&C could be selectively activated by AEP to aggregate and emit strong fluorescence. Moreover, AuNPs-Cy5.5-A&C displayed a general applicability in various cell lines and its florescence intensity correlated well with AEP activity in these cells. In the brain of APP/PS1 transgenic mice , AEP activity was increased at an early disease stage of AD that precedes formation of senile plaques and cognitive impairment. Pharmacological inhibition of AEP with δ-secretase inhibitor 11 (10 mg kg−1, p.o.) reduced production of β-amyloid (Aβ) and ameliorated memory loss. Therefore, elevation of AEP is an early sign of AD onset. Finally, we showed that live animal imaging with this AEP-responsive probe could monitor the up-regulated AEP in the brain of APP/PS1 mice. Conclusions The current work provided a proof of concept that assessment of brain AEP activity by in vivo imaging assay is a potential biomarker for early diagnosis of AD. Graphical abstract


2022 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 322-335
Author(s):  
C. R. Nagarathna ◽  
M. Kusuma

Since the past decade, the deep learning techniques are widely used in research. The objective of various applications is achieved using these techniques. The deep learning technique in the medical field helps to find medicines and diagnosis of diseases. The Alzheimer’s is a physical brain disease, on which recently many research are experimented to develop an efficient model that diagnoses the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. In this paper, a Hybrid model is proposed, which is a combination of VGG19 with additional layers, and a CNN deep learning model for detecting and classifying the different stages of Alzheimer’s and the performance is compared with the CNN model. The Magnetic Resonance Images are used to analyse both models received from the Kaggle dataset. The result shows that the Hybrid model works efficiently in detecting and classifying the different stages of Alzheimer’s.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingjing Hu ◽  
Zhao Qing ◽  
Renyuan Liu ◽  
Xin Zhang ◽  
Pin Lv ◽  
...  

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have overlapping symptoms, and accurate differential diagnosis is important for targeted intervention and treatment. Previous studies suggest that the deep learning (DL) techniques have the potential to solve the differential diagnosis problem of FTD, AD and normal controls (NCs), but its performance is still unclear. In addition, existing DL-assisted diagnostic studies still rely on hypothesis-based expert-level preprocessing. On the one hand, it imposes high requirements on clinicians and data themselves; On the other hand, it hinders the backtracking of classification results to the original image data, resulting in the classification results cannot be interpreted intuitively. In the current study, a large cohort of 3D T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes (n = 4,099) was collected from two publicly available databases, i.e., the ADNI and the NIFD. We trained a DL-based network directly based on raw T1 images to classify FTD, AD and corresponding NCs. And we evaluated the convergence speed, differential diagnosis ability, robustness and generalizability under nine scenarios. The proposed network yielded an accuracy of 91.83% based on the most common T1-weighted sequence [magnetization-prepared rapid acquisition with gradient echo (MPRAGE)]. The knowledge learned by the DL network through multiple classification tasks can also be used to solve subproblems, and the knowledge is generalizable and not limited to a specified dataset. Furthermore, we applied a gradient visualization algorithm based on guided backpropagation to calculate the contribution graph, which tells us intuitively why the DL-based networks make each decision. The regions making valuable contributions to FTD were more widespread in the right frontal white matter regions, while the left temporal, bilateral inferior frontal and parahippocampal regions were contributors to the classification of AD. Our results demonstrated that DL-based networks have the ability to solve the enigma of differential diagnosis of diseases without any hypothesis-based preprocessing. Moreover, they may mine the potential patterns that may be different from human clinicians, which may provide new insight into the understanding of FTD and AD.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 116-120
Author(s):  
Mansour Rezaei ◽  
Ehsan Zereshki ◽  
Soodeh Shahsavari ◽  
Mohammad Gharib Salehi ◽  
Hamid Sharini

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common brain failure for which no cure has yet been found. The disease starts with a disturbance in the brain structure and then it manifests itself clinically. Therefore, by timely and correct diagnosis of changes in the structure of the brain, the occurrence of this disease or at least its progression can be prevented. Due to the fact that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be used to obtain very useful information from the brain, and also because it is non-invasive, this method has been considered by researchers. Materials and Methods: The data were obtained from an MRI database (MIRIAD) of 69 subjects including 46 AD patients and 23 healthy controls (HC). Individuals were categorized based on two criteria including NINCDS-ADRAD and MMSE, as the gold standard. In this paper, we used the support vector machine (SVM) and Bayesian SVM classifiers. Results: Using the SVM classifier with Gaussian radial basis function (RBF) kernel, we distinguished AD and HC with an accuracy of 88.34%. The most important regions of interest (ROIs) in this study included right para hippocampal gyrus, left para hippocampal gyrus, right hippocampus, and left hippocampus. Conclusion: This study showed that the SVM model with Gaussian RBF kernel can distinguish AD from HC with high accuracy. These studies are of great importance in medical science. Based on the results of this study, MRI centers and neurologists can perform AD screening tests in people over the age of 50 years.


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