AXIAL: Attention-based eXplainability for Interpretable Alzheimer's Localized Diagnosis using 2D CNNs on 3D MRI brain scans

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lozupone, Gabriele, Bria, Alessandro, Fontanella, Francesco, Meijer, Frederick J. A., De Stefano, Claudio
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Lozupone, Gabriele
Bria, Alessandro
Fontanella, Francesco
Meijer, Frederick J. A.
De Stefano, Claudio
author_facet Lozupone, Gabriele
Bria, Alessandro
Fontanella, Francesco
Meijer, Frederick J. A.
De Stefano, Claudio
contents This study presents an innovative method for Alzheimer's disease diagnosis using 3D MRI designed to enhance the explainability of model decisions. Our approach adopts a soft attention mechanism, enabling 2D CNNs to extract volumetric representations. At the same time, the importance of each slice in decision-making is learned, allowing the generation of a voxel-level attention map to produce an explainable MRI. To test our method and ensure the reproducibility of our results, we chose a standardized collection of MRI data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). On this dataset, our method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods in (i) distinguishing AD from cognitive normal (CN) with an accuracy of 0.856 and Matthew's correlation coefficient (MCC) of 0.712, representing improvements of 2.4% and 5.3% respectively over the second-best, and (ii) in the prognostic task of discerning stable from progressive mild cognitive impairment (MCI) with an accuracy of 0.725 and MCC of 0.443, showing improvements of 10.2% and 20.5% respectively over the second-best. We achieved this prognostic result by adopting a double transfer learning strategy, which enhanced sensitivity to morphological changes and facilitated early-stage AD detection. With voxel-level precision, our method identified which specific areas are being paid attention to, identifying these predominant brain regions: the hippocampus, the amygdala, the parahippocampal, and the inferior lateral ventricles. All these areas are clinically associated with AD development. Furthermore, our approach consistently found the same AD-related areas across different cross-validation folds, proving its robustness and precision in highlighting areas that align closely with known pathological markers of the disease.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_02418
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AXIAL: Attention-based eXplainability for Interpretable Alzheimer's Localized Diagnosis using 2D CNNs on 3D MRI brain scans
Lozupone, Gabriele
Bria, Alessandro
Fontanella, Francesco
Meijer, Frederick J. A.
De Stefano, Claudio
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
41A05 41A10 65D05 65D17
This study presents an innovative method for Alzheimer's disease diagnosis using 3D MRI designed to enhance the explainability of model decisions. Our approach adopts a soft attention mechanism, enabling 2D CNNs to extract volumetric representations. At the same time, the importance of each slice in decision-making is learned, allowing the generation of a voxel-level attention map to produce an explainable MRI. To test our method and ensure the reproducibility of our results, we chose a standardized collection of MRI data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). On this dataset, our method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods in (i) distinguishing AD from cognitive normal (CN) with an accuracy of 0.856 and Matthew's correlation coefficient (MCC) of 0.712, representing improvements of 2.4% and 5.3% respectively over the second-best, and (ii) in the prognostic task of discerning stable from progressive mild cognitive impairment (MCI) with an accuracy of 0.725 and MCC of 0.443, showing improvements of 10.2% and 20.5% respectively over the second-best. We achieved this prognostic result by adopting a double transfer learning strategy, which enhanced sensitivity to morphological changes and facilitated early-stage AD detection. With voxel-level precision, our method identified which specific areas are being paid attention to, identifying these predominant brain regions: the hippocampus, the amygdala, the parahippocampal, and the inferior lateral ventricles. All these areas are clinically associated with AD development. Furthermore, our approach consistently found the same AD-related areas across different cross-validation folds, proving its robustness and precision in highlighting areas that align closely with known pathological markers of the disease.
title AXIAL: Attention-based eXplainability for Interpretable Alzheimer's Localized Diagnosis using 2D CNNs on 3D MRI brain scans
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
41A05 41A10 65D05 65D17
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.02418