Abstract
Introduction Structural brain imaging is paramount for the diagnosis of behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), but it has low sensitivity leading to erroneous or late diagnosis. Methods A total of 515 subjects from two different bvFTD cohorts (training and independent validation cohorts) were used to perform voxel-wise morphometric analysis to identify regions with significant differences between bvFTD and controls. A random forest classifier was used to individually predict bvFTD from deformation-based morphometry differences in isolation and together with semantic fluency. Tenfold cross validation was used to assess the performance of the classifier within the training cohort. A second held-out cohort of genetically confirmed bvFTD cases was used for additional validation. Results Average 10-fold cross-validation accuracy was 89% (82% sensitivity, 93% specificity) using only MRI and 94% (89% sensitivity, 98% specificity) with the addition of semantic fluency. In the separate validation cohort of definite bvFTD, accuracy was 88% (81% sensitivity, 92% specificity) with MRI and 91% (79% sensitivity, 96% specificity) with added semantic fluency scores. Conclusion Our results show that structural MRI and semantic fluency can accurately predict bvFTD at the individual subject level within a completely independent validation cohort coming from a different and independent database.
| Item Type: | Journal article |
|---|---|
| Faculties: | Medicine |
| Subjects: | 600 Technology > 610 Medicine and health |
| ISSN: | 0022-3050 |
| Language: | English |
| Item ID: | 100368 |
| Date Deposited: | 05. Jun 2023 15:34 |
| Last Modified: | 17. Oct 2023 15:04 |
