Structured Multivariate Pattern Classification to Detect MRI Markers for an Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer´s Disease

Multiple kernel learning (MKL) provides flexibility by considering multiple data views and by searching for the best data representation through a combination of kernels. Clinical applications of neuroimaging have seen recent upsurge of the use of multivariate machine learning methods to predict clinical status. However, they usually do not model structured information, such as cerebral spatial and functional networking, which could improve the predictive capacity of the model and which could be more meaningful for further neuroscientific interpretation. In this study, we applied a MKL-based approach to predict prodromal stage of Alzheimer disease (i.e. early phase of the illness) with prior structured knowledges about the brain spatial neighborhood structure and the brain functional circuits linked to cognitve decline of AD. Compared to a set of classical multivariate linear classifiers, each one highlighting specific strategies, the smooth MKL-SVM method (i.e. Lp MKL-SVM) appeared to be the most powerful to distinguish both very mild and mild AD patients from healthy subjets.