Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhao, Dengyi, Li, Shanyong, Wang, Yunping, Wang, Chenfei, Zhou, Zhiheng, Yan, Guiying, Qi, Xingqin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14634
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911161149030400
author Zhao, Dengyi
Li, Shanyong
Wang, Yunping
Wang, Chenfei
Zhou, Zhiheng
Yan, Guiying
Qi, Xingqin
author_facet Zhao, Dengyi
Li, Shanyong
Wang, Yunping
Wang, Chenfei
Zhou, Zhiheng
Yan, Guiying
Qi, Xingqin
contents Brain network topology, derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), holds promise for improving Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis. Current methods primarily focus on lower-order topological features, often overlooking the significance of higher-order features such as connected components, cycles, and cavities. These higher-order features are critical for understanding normal brain function and have been increasingly linked to the pathological mechanisms of AD. However, their quantification for diagnosing AD is hindered by their inherent nonlinearity and stochasticity in the brain. This paper introduces a novel framework for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease that uses persistent homology to extract higher-order topological features from fMRI data. It also introduces four quantitative methods that capture subtle, multiscale geometric variations in functional brain networks associated with AD. Our experimental results demonstrate that this framework significantly outperforms existing methods in AD classification. Extensive ablation studies and interpretability analysis confirm the effectiveness of our framework. Our study also reveals that the number of cycles or cavities significantly decrease in AD patients. The extracted key brain regions derived from cycles and cavities align with domain knowledge in neuroscience literature and provide direct and insightful findings. This study highlights the potential of higher-order topological features for early AD detection and significantly advances the field of brain topology analysis in neurodegenerative disease research.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_14634
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Extracting Interpretable Higher-Order Topological Features across Multiple Scales for Alzheimer's Disease Classification
Zhao, Dengyi
Li, Shanyong
Wang, Yunping
Wang, Chenfei
Zhou, Zhiheng
Yan, Guiying
Qi, Xingqin
Geometric Topology
Brain network topology, derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), holds promise for improving Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis. Current methods primarily focus on lower-order topological features, often overlooking the significance of higher-order features such as connected components, cycles, and cavities. These higher-order features are critical for understanding normal brain function and have been increasingly linked to the pathological mechanisms of AD. However, their quantification for diagnosing AD is hindered by their inherent nonlinearity and stochasticity in the brain. This paper introduces a novel framework for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease that uses persistent homology to extract higher-order topological features from fMRI data. It also introduces four quantitative methods that capture subtle, multiscale geometric variations in functional brain networks associated with AD. Our experimental results demonstrate that this framework significantly outperforms existing methods in AD classification. Extensive ablation studies and interpretability analysis confirm the effectiveness of our framework. Our study also reveals that the number of cycles or cavities significantly decrease in AD patients. The extracted key brain regions derived from cycles and cavities align with domain knowledge in neuroscience literature and provide direct and insightful findings. This study highlights the potential of higher-order topological features for early AD detection and significantly advances the field of brain topology analysis in neurodegenerative disease research.
title Extracting Interpretable Higher-Order Topological Features across Multiple Scales for Alzheimer's Disease Classification
topic Geometric Topology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14634