Development of Random Forest Algorithm Based Prediction Model of Alzheimer’s Disease Using Neurodegeneration Pattern
Jee Young Kim, Minho Lee, Min Kyoung Lee, Sheng‐Min Wang, Nak-Young Kim, Dong Woo Kang, Yoo Hyun Um, Hae-Ran Na, Young Sup Woo, Chang Uk Lee, Won‐Myong Bahk, Donghyeon Kim, Hyun Kook Lim
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia and the prevalence rapidly increased as the elderly population increased worldwide. In the contemporary model of AD, it is regarded as a disease continuum involving preclinical stage to severe dementia. For accurate diagnosis and disease monitoring, objective index reflecting structural change of brain is needed to correctly assess a patient's severity of neurodegeneration independent from the patient's clinical symptoms. The main aim of this paper is to develop a random forest (RF) algorithm-based prediction model of AD using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). METHODS: We evaluated diagnostic accuracy and performance of our RF based prediction model using newly developed brain segmentation method compared with the Freesurfer's which is a commonly used segmentation software. RESULTS: Our RF model showed high diagnostic accuracy for differentiating healthy controls from AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) using structural MRI, patient characteristics, and cognitive function (HC vs. AD 93.5%, AUC 0.99; HC vs. MCI 80.8%, AUC 0.88). Moreover, segmentation processing time of our algorithm (<5 minutes) was much shorter than of Freesurfer's (6-8 hours). CONCLUSION: Our RF model might be an effective automatic brain segmentation tool which can be easily applied in real clinical practice.