A Multimodal data fusion approach efficiently predicts disease duration in multiple sclerosis

• Published in: 2016 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) pp. 4518 - 4524
• Main Authors: Shoshtari, Ava Sheikhi, Sue-Jin Lin, McKeown, Martin J., Wang, Z. Jane
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.07.2016
• Subjects: Anisotropic magnetoresistance; Correlation; Data fusion; Data mining; Diffusion tensor imaging; DTI; multimodal; Multiple sclerosis; MWF; MWI; resting state fMRI
• ISSN: 2161-4407
• DOI: 10.1109/IJCNN.2016.7727791

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) biomarkers of multiple sclerosis (MS), particularly fluid-attenuated inversion-recovery (FLAIR) sequences, have long been investigated. However, advanced analytical methods, capable of fusing results from different MRI modalities, could be more informative to have enabled joint biomarkers. Here we estimate disease duration (DD) in MS subjects (n=47) based on fusion of information from Myelin Water Imaging (MWI), Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), and resting state functional MRI (rsfMRI) modalities, by adapting a joint Multimodal Statistical Analysis Framework. Using this data driven, multimodal, latent variable (LV) approach, common and unique information in each dataset was acquired and their relationship with DD is analyzed through the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) regression. The common components between the three modalities, but not the unique components of each modality, accurately predicted DD. To further investigate the regions importance for estimating DD, we separated the data into two groups: "early" and "late" DD depending upon their relationship to the median duration of illness (120 months). In early disease, DTI information in the Right Tapetum and the Fornix jointly with MWI information in the Left Superior Cerebellar Penducle, Right Cerebral Penducle, and Cingulum were most informative. In contrast, rsfMRI demonstrated altered connectivity throughout disease duration. Our results demonstrate the power of multimodal imaging markers in MS.