Zhao Feng, Han Zhongwei, Cheng Dapeng, Mao Ning, Chen Xiaobo, Li Yuan, Fan Deming, Liu Peiqiang
School of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong Technology and Business University, Yantai, China.
Department of Radiology, Yantai Yuhuangding Hospital, Yantai, China.
Front Neurosci. 2022 Feb 10;15:810431. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.810431. eCollection 2021.
Functional connectivity network (FCN) calculated by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) plays an increasingly important role in the exploration of neurologic and mental diseases. Among the presented researches, the method of constructing FCN based on Matrix Variate Normal Distribution (MVND) theory provides a novel perspective, which can capture both low- and high-order correlations simultaneously with a clear mathematical interpretability. However, when fitting MVND model, the dimension of the parameters (i.e., population mean and population covariance) to be estimated is too high, but the number of samples is relatively quite small, which is insufficient to achieve accurate fitting. To address the issue, we divide the brain network into several sub-networks, and then the MVND based FCN construction algorithm is implemented in each sub-network, thus the spatial dimension of MVND is reduced and more accurate estimates of low- and high-order FCNs is obtained. Furthermore, for making up the functional connectivity which is lost because of the sub-network division, the rs-fMRI mean series of all sub-networks are calculated, and the low- and high-order FCN across sub-networks are estimated with the MVND based FCN construction method. In order to prove the superiority and effectiveness of this method, we design and conduct classification experiments on ASD patients and normal controls. The experimental results show that the classification accuracy of "hierarchical sub-network method" is greatly improved, and the sub-network found most related to ASD in our experiment is consistent with other related medical researches.
通过静息态功能磁共振成像(rs-fMRI)计算得到的功能连接网络(FCN)在神经和精神疾病的探索中发挥着越来越重要的作用。在已发表的研究中,基于矩阵变量正态分布(MVND)理论构建FCN的方法提供了一个新的视角,该方法能够同时捕捉低阶和高阶相关性,且具有清晰的数学可解释性。然而,在拟合MVND模型时,待估计参数(即总体均值和总体协方差)的维度过高,而样本数量相对较少,不足以实现精确拟合。为了解决这个问题,我们将脑网络划分为几个子网络,然后在每个子网络中实施基于MVND的FCN构建算法,从而降低了MVND的空间维度,并获得了更准确的低阶和高阶FCN估计。此外,为了弥补由于子网络划分而丢失的功能连接,我们计算了所有子网络的rs-fMRI均值序列,并使用基于MVND的FCN构建方法估计跨子网络的低阶和高阶FCN。为了证明该方法的优越性和有效性,我们对自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)患者和正常对照进行了分类实验。实验结果表明,“分层子网络方法”的分类准确率有了很大提高,并且我们实验中发现的与ASD最相关的子网络与其他相关医学研究结果一致。