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Main Authors: He, Tiantian, Zhao, An, Thompson, Elinor, Schroder, Anna, Abdulaal, Ahmed, Barkhof, Frederik, Alexander, Daniel C.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.10890
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author He, Tiantian
Zhao, An
Thompson, Elinor
Schroder, Anna
Abdulaal, Ahmed
Barkhof, Frederik
Alexander, Daniel C.
author_facet He, Tiantian
Zhao, An
Thompson, Elinor
Schroder, Anna
Abdulaal, Ahmed
Barkhof, Frederik
Alexander, Daniel C.
contents Understanding the interactions between biomarkers among brain regions during neurodegenerative disease is essential for unravelling the mechanisms underlying disease progression. For example, pathophysiological models of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) typically describe how variables, such as regional levels of toxic proteins, interact spatiotemporally within a dynamical system driven by an underlying biological substrate, often based on brain connectivity. However, current methods grossly oversimplify the complex relationship between brain connectivity by assuming a single-modality brain connectome as the disease-spreading substrate. This leads to inaccurate predictions of pathology spread, especially during the long-term progression period. Meanhwile, other methods of learning such a graph in a purely data-driven way face the identifiability issue due to lack of proper constraint. We thus present a novel framework that uses Large Language Models (LLMs) as expert guides on the interaction of regional variables to enhance learning of disease progression from irregularly sampled longitudinal patient data. By leveraging LLMs' ability to synthesize multi-modal relationships and incorporate diverse disease-driving mechanisms, our method simultaneously optimizes 1) the construction of long-term disease trajectories from individual-level observations and 2) the biologically-constrained graph structure that captures interactions among brain regions with better identifiability. We demonstrate the new approach by estimating the pathology propagation using tau-PET imaging data from an Alzheimer's disease cohort. The new framework demonstrates superior prediction accuracy and interpretability compared to traditional approaches while revealing additional disease-driving factors beyond conventional connectivity measures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_10890
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LLM enhanced graph inference for long-term disease progression modelling
He, Tiantian
Zhao, An
Thompson, Elinor
Schroder, Anna
Abdulaal, Ahmed
Barkhof, Frederik
Alexander, Daniel C.
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Understanding the interactions between biomarkers among brain regions during neurodegenerative disease is essential for unravelling the mechanisms underlying disease progression. For example, pathophysiological models of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) typically describe how variables, such as regional levels of toxic proteins, interact spatiotemporally within a dynamical system driven by an underlying biological substrate, often based on brain connectivity. However, current methods grossly oversimplify the complex relationship between brain connectivity by assuming a single-modality brain connectome as the disease-spreading substrate. This leads to inaccurate predictions of pathology spread, especially during the long-term progression period. Meanhwile, other methods of learning such a graph in a purely data-driven way face the identifiability issue due to lack of proper constraint. We thus present a novel framework that uses Large Language Models (LLMs) as expert guides on the interaction of regional variables to enhance learning of disease progression from irregularly sampled longitudinal patient data. By leveraging LLMs' ability to synthesize multi-modal relationships and incorporate diverse disease-driving mechanisms, our method simultaneously optimizes 1) the construction of long-term disease trajectories from individual-level observations and 2) the biologically-constrained graph structure that captures interactions among brain regions with better identifiability. We demonstrate the new approach by estimating the pathology propagation using tau-PET imaging data from an Alzheimer's disease cohort. The new framework demonstrates superior prediction accuracy and interpretability compared to traditional approaches while revealing additional disease-driving factors beyond conventional connectivity measures.
title LLM enhanced graph inference for long-term disease progression modelling
topic Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.10890