Min-Cut Max-Flow for Network Abnormality Detection: Application to Preterm Birth

Abstract

Neuroimaging studies of structural connectomes typically average the data from many subjects and analyse the average properties of the resulting network. We propose a new framework for individual brain-network structural abnormality detection. The framework uses a graph-based anomaly detection algorithm that allows to detect abnormal structural connectivity on a subject level. The proposed method is generic and can be adapted for a broad range of network abnormality detection problems. In this study, we apply our method to investigate the integrity of white matter tracts of 19-year-old extremely preterm born individuals. We show the feasibility to cast the network abnormality detection problem into a min-cut max-flow problem, and identify consistent abnormal white matter tracts in extremely preterm subjects, including a common network involving the bilateral thalamus and frontal gyri.