Faster brain aging tests could speed up disease research at scale
Researchers found a way to predict biological brain age from MRI scans using simplified 2D images instead of full 3D volumes, cutting computational costs dramatically. The method maintains reasonable accuracy and could accelerate processing of massive biobanks like the U.K.'s 29,000-subject dataset, unlocking faster breakthroughs in neurodegenerative disease research.
Originaltitel: Brain Age Prediction Using 2D Projections Based on Higher-Order Statistical Moments and Eigenslices from 3D Magnetic Resonance Imaging Volumes
<p>Brain age prediction from 3D MRI volumes using deep learning has recently become a popular research topic, as brain age has been shown to be an important biomarker. Training deep networks can be very computationally demanding for large datasets like the U.K. Biobank (currently 29,035 subjects). In our previous work, it was demonstrated that using a few 2D projections (mean and standard deviation along three axes) instead of each full 3D volume leads to much faster training at the cost of a reduction in prediction accuracy. Here, we investigated if another set of 2D projections, based on higher-order statistical central moments and eigenslices, leads to a higher accuracy. Our results show that higher-order moments do not lead to a higher accuracy, but that eigenslices provide a small improvement. We also show that an ensemble of such models provides further improvement.</p>