Classification method based on surf and sift features for alzheimer diagnosis using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging

Abstract Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common dementia in the elderly, poses a challenge for early diagnosis due to its progressive nature and hidden microstructural changes. While traditional T1 and T2 weighted MRI can assess macro-structural brain atrophy, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) unvei...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Nourhan Zayed, Ghaidaa Eldeep, Inas A. Yassine
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-03-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-92759-2
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1850057608757510144
author Nourhan Zayed
Ghaidaa Eldeep
Inas A. Yassine
author_facet Nourhan Zayed
Ghaidaa Eldeep
Inas A. Yassine
author_sort Nourhan Zayed
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common dementia in the elderly, poses a challenge for early diagnosis due to its progressive nature and hidden microstructural changes. While traditional T1 and T2 weighted MRI can assess macro-structural brain atrophy, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) unveils these hidden microstructural alterations. This study explores the use of DTI data, specifically visual patterns in Fractional Anisotropy (FA), Mean Diffusivity (MD), and Radial Diffusivity (RD) maps, to characterize AD progression. This paper proposes a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) framework employing SIFT and SURF descriptors and a bag-of-words approach to build AD-specific signatures for the hippocampus region, known to be heavily affected by the disease. These signatures are extracted from MD, FA, and RD maps and used to differentiate between AD, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and normal controls (NC) in both multiclass and binary classification scenarios. Additionally, we investigate late fusion of visual map features for enhanced decision-making. The experiments were accomplished with a subset of participants from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset formed of AD patients (n = 35), Early Mild Cognitive Impairment (EMCI) (n = 6), Late Mild Cognitive Impairment (LMCI) (n = 24) and cognitively healthy elderly Normal Controls (NC) (n = 31). Promising preliminary results demonstrate the potential of the proposed system as a useful tool to capture the AD leanness with achieving accuracies of 87.5%, 87.4%, 89%, and 95.2% for MD, FA, RD, and fusion of features respectively for the multiclass system using SIFT features. Using FA features for binary discrimination achieves 97.5%. Moreover, the fusion based on the decision level model reached an accuracy of 93.3% AD/MCI, 95.7% AD/NC, and 93.3% MCI/NC (96.2 ± 3.6 MCI vs. NC, 97.5 ± 5 AD vs. NC). Furthermore, fusion of features led to a noteworthy precision boost of 96%. These findings suggest that our DTI-based CAD framework holds promise as a reliable and accurate tool for capturing AD progression, paving the way for earlier diagnosis and potentially improved patient outcomes.
format Article
id doaj-art-06f92f0f705c4ff388518bc72700dcb2
institution DOAJ
issn 2045-2322
language English
publishDate 2025-03-01
publisher Nature Portfolio
record_format Article
series Scientific Reports
spelling doaj-art-06f92f0f705c4ff388518bc72700dcb22025-08-20T02:51:23ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222025-03-0115111510.1038/s41598-025-92759-2Classification method based on surf and sift features for alzheimer diagnosis using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imagingNourhan Zayed0Ghaidaa Eldeep1Inas A. Yassine2Computer and Systems Department, Electronics Research InstituteSystems and Biomedical Engineering, Cairo UniversitySystems and Biomedical Engineering, Cairo UniversityAbstract Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common dementia in the elderly, poses a challenge for early diagnosis due to its progressive nature and hidden microstructural changes. While traditional T1 and T2 weighted MRI can assess macro-structural brain atrophy, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) unveils these hidden microstructural alterations. This study explores the use of DTI data, specifically visual patterns in Fractional Anisotropy (FA), Mean Diffusivity (MD), and Radial Diffusivity (RD) maps, to characterize AD progression. This paper proposes a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) framework employing SIFT and SURF descriptors and a bag-of-words approach to build AD-specific signatures for the hippocampus region, known to be heavily affected by the disease. These signatures are extracted from MD, FA, and RD maps and used to differentiate between AD, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and normal controls (NC) in both multiclass and binary classification scenarios. Additionally, we investigate late fusion of visual map features for enhanced decision-making. The experiments were accomplished with a subset of participants from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset formed of AD patients (n = 35), Early Mild Cognitive Impairment (EMCI) (n = 6), Late Mild Cognitive Impairment (LMCI) (n = 24) and cognitively healthy elderly Normal Controls (NC) (n = 31). Promising preliminary results demonstrate the potential of the proposed system as a useful tool to capture the AD leanness with achieving accuracies of 87.5%, 87.4%, 89%, and 95.2% for MD, FA, RD, and fusion of features respectively for the multiclass system using SIFT features. Using FA features for binary discrimination achieves 97.5%. Moreover, the fusion based on the decision level model reached an accuracy of 93.3% AD/MCI, 95.7% AD/NC, and 93.3% MCI/NC (96.2 ± 3.6 MCI vs. NC, 97.5 ± 5 AD vs. NC). Furthermore, fusion of features led to a noteworthy precision boost of 96%. These findings suggest that our DTI-based CAD framework holds promise as a reliable and accurate tool for capturing AD progression, paving the way for earlier diagnosis and potentially improved patient outcomes.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-92759-2Alzheimer ’s disease (AD)SIFT features and SURF featuresDiffusion tensor imaging (DTI)Bag of wordsHippocampusAmygdala
spellingShingle Nourhan Zayed
Ghaidaa Eldeep
Inas A. Yassine
Classification method based on surf and sift features for alzheimer diagnosis using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging
Scientific Reports
Alzheimer ’s disease (AD)
SIFT features and SURF features
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)
Bag of words
Hippocampus
Amygdala
title Classification method based on surf and sift features for alzheimer diagnosis using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging
title_full Classification method based on surf and sift features for alzheimer diagnosis using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging
title_fullStr Classification method based on surf and sift features for alzheimer diagnosis using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging
title_full_unstemmed Classification method based on surf and sift features for alzheimer diagnosis using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging
title_short Classification method based on surf and sift features for alzheimer diagnosis using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging
title_sort classification method based on surf and sift features for alzheimer diagnosis using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging
topic Alzheimer ’s disease (AD)
SIFT features and SURF features
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)
Bag of words
Hippocampus
Amygdala
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-92759-2
work_keys_str_mv AT nourhanzayed classificationmethodbasedonsurfandsiftfeaturesforalzheimerdiagnosisusingdiffusiontensormagneticresonanceimaging
AT ghaidaaeldeep classificationmethodbasedonsurfandsiftfeaturesforalzheimerdiagnosisusingdiffusiontensormagneticresonanceimaging
AT inasayassine classificationmethodbasedonsurfandsiftfeaturesforalzheimerdiagnosisusingdiffusiontensormagneticresonanceimaging