Improved Parkinson’s disease classification from diffusion MRI data by fisher vector descriptors

Abstract

Due to the complex clinical picture of Parkinson’s disease (PD), the reliable diagnosis of patients is still challenging. A promising approach is the structural characterization of brain areas affected in PD by diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI). Standard classification methods depend on an accurate non-linear alignment of all images to a common reference template, and are challenged by the resulting huge dimensionality of the extracted feature space. Here, we propose a novel diagnosis pipeline based on the Fisher vector algorithm. This technique allows for a precise encoding into a high-level descriptor of standard diffusion measures like the fractional anisotropy and the mean diffusivity, extracted from the regions of interest (ROIs) typically involved in PD. The obtained low dimensional, fixed-length descriptors are independent of the image alignment and boost the linear separability of the problem in the description space, leading to more efficient and accurate diagnosis. In a test cohort of 50 PD patients and 50 controls, the implemented methodology outperforms previous methods when using a logistic linear regressor for classification of each ROI independently, which are subsequently combined into a single classification decision.