Biao Jie

Zhixiang Zhang, Biao Jie, Zhengdong Wang et al.

Recent studies have applied deep learning methods such as convolutional recurrent neural networks (CRNs) and Transformers to brain disease classification based on dynamic functional connectivity networks (dFCNs), such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), achieving better performance than traditional machine learning methods. However, in CRNs, the continuous convolution operations used to obtain high-order aggregation features may overlook the non-linear correlation between different brain regions due to the essence of convolution being the linear weighted sum of local elements. Inspired by modern neuroscience on the research of covert attention in the nervous system, we introduce the self-attention mechanism, a core module of Transformers, to model diversified covert attention patterns and apply these patterns to reconstruct high-order sequence features of dFCNs in order to learn complex dynamic changes in brain information flow. Therefore, we propose a novel CRN method based on diversified covert attention patterns, DCA-CRN, which combines the advantages of CRNs in capturing local spatio-temporal features and sequence change patterns, as well as Transformers in learning global and high-order correlation features. Experimental results on the ADNI and ADHD-200 datasets demonstrate the prediction performance and generalization ability of our proposed method.

Kai Ma, Biao Jie, Daoqiang Zhang

Brain connectivity networks, which characterize the functional or structural interaction of brain regions, has been widely used for brain disease classification. Kernel-based method, such as graph kernel (i.e., kernel defined on graphs), has been proposed for measuring the similarity of brain networks, and yields the promising classification performance. However, most of graph kernels are built on unweighted graph (i.e., network) with edge present or not, and neglecting the valuable weight information of edges in brain connectivity network, with edge weights conveying the strengths of temporal correlation or fiber connection between brain regions. Accordingly, in this paper, we present an ordinal pattern kernel for brain connectivity network classification. Different with existing graph kernels that measures the topological similarity of unweighted graphs, the proposed ordinal pattern kernels calculate the similarity of weighted networks by comparing ordinal patterns from weighted networks. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed ordinal kernel, we further develop a depth-first-based ordinal pattern kernel, and perform extensive experiments in a real dataset of brain disease from ADNI database. The results demonstrate that our proposed ordinal pattern kernel can achieve better classification performance compared with state-of-the-art graph kernels.