Multiparametric Microstructural MRI and Machine Learning Classification Yields High Diagnostic Accuracy in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: Proof of Concept

The potential of multiparametric quantitative neuroimaging has been extensively discussed as a diagnostic tool in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In the past, the integration of multimodal, quantitative data into a useful diagnostic classifier was a major challenge. With recent advances in the field, machine learning in a data driven approach is a potential solution: neuroimaging biomarkers in ALS are mainly observed in the cerebral microstructure, with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and texture analysis as promising approaches. We set out to combine these neuroimaging markers as age-corrected features in a machine learning model with a cohort of 502 subjects, divided into 404 patients with ALS and 98 healthy controls. We calculated a linear support vector classifier (SVC) which is a very robust model and then verified the results with a multilayer perceptron (MLP)/neural network. Both classifiers were able to separate ALS patients from controls with receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves showing an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.87–0.88 (“good”) for the SVC and 0.88–0.91 (“good” to “excellent”) for the MLP. Among the coefficients of the SVC, texture data contributed the most to a correct classification. We consider these results as a proof of concept that demonstrated the power of machine learning in the application of multiparametric quantitative neuroimaging data to ALS.