Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis often requires invasive examinations (e.g., liquor analyses), expensive tools (e.g., brain imaging) and highly specialized personnel. The diagnosis commonly is established when the disorder has already caused severe brain damage, and the clinical signs begin to be apparent. Instead, accessible and low-cost approaches for early identification of subjects at high risk for developing AD years before they show overt symptoms are fundamental to provide a critical time window for more effective clinical management, treatment, and care planning. This article proposes an ensemble-based machine learning algorithm for predicting AD development within 9 years from first overt signs and using just five clinical features that are easily detectable with neuropsychological tests. The validation of the system involved both healthy individuals and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients drawn from the ADNI open dataset, at variance with previous studies that considered only MCI. The system shows higher levels of balanced accuracy, negative predictive value, and specificity than other similar solutions. These results represent a further important step to build a preventive fast-screening machine-learning-based tool to be used as a part of routine healthcare screenings.

A multi-expert ensemble system for predicting Alzheimer transition using clinical features

Merone M.;
2022-01-01

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis often requires invasive examinations (e.g., liquor analyses), expensive tools (e.g., brain imaging) and highly specialized personnel. The diagnosis commonly is established when the disorder has already caused severe brain damage, and the clinical signs begin to be apparent. Instead, accessible and low-cost approaches for early identification of subjects at high risk for developing AD years before they show overt symptoms are fundamental to provide a critical time window for more effective clinical management, treatment, and care planning. This article proposes an ensemble-based machine learning algorithm for predicting AD development within 9 years from first overt signs and using just five clinical features that are easily detectable with neuropsychological tests. The validation of the system involved both healthy individuals and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients drawn from the ADNI open dataset, at variance with previous studies that considered only MCI. The system shows higher levels of balanced accuracy, negative predictive value, and specificity than other similar solutions. These results represent a further important step to build a preventive fast-screening machine-learning-based tool to be used as a part of routine healthcare screenings.
2022
ADAS score; Cerebellar impairment; Clinical Dementia Rating Scale; Early diagnosis; Machine learning; Renal and genitourinary dysfunctions
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12610/70303
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? 0
  • Scopus 3
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact