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Add to EdgeInfant Brain Age Classification: 2D CNN Outperforms 3D CNN in Small Dataset
Dec 27, 2021
Determining if the brain is developing normally is a key component of pediatric neuroradiology and neurology. Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of infants demonstrates a specific pattern of development beyond simply myelination. While radiologists have used myelination patterns, brain morphology and size characteristics to determine age-adequate brain maturity, this requires years of experience in pediatric neuroradiology. With no standardized criteria, visual estimation of the structural maturity of the brain from MRI before three years of age remains dominated by inter-observer and intra-observer variability. A more objective estimation of brain developmental age could help physicians identify many neurodevelopmental conditions and diseases earlier and more reliably. Such data, however, is naturally hard to obtain, and the observer ground truth not much of a gold standard due to subjectivity of assessment. In this light, we explore the general feasibility to tackle this task, and the utility of different approaches, including two- and three-dimensional convolutional neural networks (CNN) that were trained on a fusion of T1-weighted, T2-weighted, and proton density (PD) weighted sequences from 84 individual subjects divided into four age groups from birth to 3 years of age. In the best performing approach, we achieved an accuracy of 0.90 [95% CI:0.86-0.94] using a 2D CNN on a central axial thick slab. We discuss the comparison to 3D networks and show how the performance compares to the use of only one sequence (T1w). In conclusion, despite the theoretical superiority of 3D CNN approaches, in limited-data situations, such approaches are inferior to simpler architectures. The code can be found in https://github.com/shabanian2018/Age_MRI-Classification
* 8 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2010.03963
Classification of Neurodevelopmental Age in Normal Infants Using 3D-CNN based on Brain MRI
Nov 05, 2019
Human brain development is rapid during infancy and early childhood. Many disease processes impair this development. Therefore, brain developmental age estimation (BDAE) is essential for all diseases affecting cognitive development. Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of infants shows brain growth and morphologic patterns during childhood. Therefore, we can estimate the developmental age from brain images. However, MRI analysis is time-consuming because each scan contains millions of data points (voxels). We investigated the three-dimensional convolutional neural network (3D CNN), a deep learning algorithm, to rapidly classify neurodevelopmental age with high accuracy based on MRIs. MRIs from normal newborns were obtained from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Data Archive. Age categories of pediatric MRIs were 3 wks + 1 wk, 1 yr + 2 wks, and 3 yrs + 4 wks. We trained a BDAE method using T1, T2, and proton density (PD) images from MRI scans of 112 individuals using 3D CNN. Compared with the known age, our method has a sensitivity of 99% and specificity of 98.3%. Moreover, our 3D CNN model has better performance in neurodevelopmental age estimation than does 2D CNN.