Unveiling Early Signs of Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease Through ERP Analysis with Weighted Visibility Graphs and Ensemble Learning

• Published in: Bioengineering (Basel) Vol. 12; no. 8; p. 814
• Main Authors: Liu, Yongshuai, Xia, Jiangyi, Kan, Ziwen, Zhang, Jesse, Toprani, Sheela, Brewer, James B., Kutas, Marta, Liu, Xin, Olichney, John
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 29.07.2025; MDPI
• Subjects: Alzheimer's disease; Biomarkers; Brain research; Classification; Clinical trials; Cognitive ability; Data points; EEG; Effectiveness; Electrodes; Electroencephalography; Ensemble learning; Event-related potentials; Graph theory; Graphs; Health care; Learning algorithms; Machine learning; Memory; Neurodegenerative diseases; Noise reduction; Principal components analysis; Repetition; Statistical analysis; Therapeutic applications; Time series; Visibility
• ISSN: 2306-5354; 2306-5354
• DOI: 10.3390/bioengineering12080814

The early detection of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is important for effective therapeutic interventions and optimized enrollment for clinical trials. Recent studies have shown high accuracy in identifying mild AD by applying visibility graph and machine learning methods to electroencephalographic (EEG) data. We present a novel analytical framework combining Weighted Visibility Graphs (WVG) and ensemble learning to detect individuals in the “preclinical” stage of AD (preAD) using a word repetition EEG paradigm, where WVG is an advanced variant of natural Visibility Graph (VG), incorporating weighted edges based on the visibility degree between corresponding data points. The EEG signals were recorded from 40 cognitively unimpaired elderly participants (20 preclinical AD and 20 normal old) during a word repetition task. Event-related potential (ERP) and oscillatory signals were extracted from each EEG channel and transformed into a WVG network, from which relevant topological features were extracted. The features were selected using t-tests to reduce noise. Subsequent statistical analysis reveals significant disparities in the structure of WVG networks between preAD and normal subjects. Furthermore, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied to condense the input data into its principal features. Leveraging these PCA components as input features, several machine learning algorithms are used to classify preAD vs. normal subjects. To enhance classification accuracy and robustness, an ensemble method is employed alongside the classifiers. Our framework achieved an accuracy of up to 92% discriminating preAD from normal old using both linear and non-linear classifiers, signifying the efficacy of combining WVG and ensemble learning in identifying very early AD from EEG signals. The framework can also improve clinical efficiency by reducing the amount of data required for effective classification and thus saving valuable clinical time.