Heterogeneity by global and textural feature analysis in F-18 FP-CIT brain PET images for diagnosis of Parkinson's disease

BACKGROUND: The quantification of heterogeneity for the striatum and whole brain with F-18 FP-CIT PET images will be useful for diagnosis. The index obtained from texture analysis on PET images is related to pathological change that the neuronal loss of the nigrostriatal tract is heterogeneous according to the disease state. The aim of this study is to evaluate various heterogeneity indices of F-18 FP-CIT PET images in the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and to access the diagnostic accuracy of the indices using machine learning (ML). METHODS: This retrospective study included F-18 FP-CIT PET images of 31 PD and 31 age-matched health controls (HC). The volume of interest was delineated according to iso-contour lines around standardized uptake value (SUV) 3.0 g/ml for each region of the striatum by PMod 3.603. One hundred eight heterogeneity indices were calculated using CGITA to find indices from which the PD and HC were classified using statistical significance. PD group was classified by constructing a 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional phase space quantifier using these heterogeneity indices. We used 71 heterogeneity indices to classify PD from HC using ML for dimensional reduction. RESULTS: The heterogeneity indices for classifying PD from HC were size-zone variability, contrast, inverse difference-moment, and homogeneity in the order of low P value. Three-dimensional quantifiers composed of normalized-contrast, code-similarity, and contrast were more clearly classified than 2-dimensional ones. After 71-dimensional reduction using PCA, classification was possible by logistic regression with 91.3% accuracy. The 2 groups were classified with an accuracy of 85.5% using the support vector machine and 88.4% using the random forest. The classification accuracy using the eXtreme Gradient Boosting was 95.7%, and feature importance was highest in order of SUV bias-corrected kurtosis, size-zone-variability, intensity-variability, and high-intensity-zone-variability. CONCLUSION: It was confirmed that PD patients is more clearly classified than the conventional 2-dimensional quantifier by introducing a 3-dimensional phase space quantifier. We observed that ML can be used to classify the 2 groups in an easy and explanatory manner. For the discrimination of the disease, 24 heterogeneity indices were found to be statistically useful, and the major cut-off values of 3 heterogeneity indices were size-zone variability (1906.44), intensity variability (129.21), and high intensity zone emphasis (800.29).