Evaluation of Mean Shift, ComBat, and CycleGAN for Harmonizing Brain Connectivity Matrices Across Sites

The BIOCARD Study Team

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Connectivity matrices derived from diffusion MRI (dMRI) provide an interpretable and generalizable way of understanding the human brain connectome. However, dMRI suffers from inter-site and between-scanner variation, which impedes analysis across datasets to improve robustness and reproducibility of results. To evaluate different harmonization approaches on connectivity matrices, we compared graph measures derived from these matrices before and after applying three harmonization techniques: mean shift, ComBat, and CycleGAN. The sample comprises 168 age-matched, sex-matched normal subjects from two studies: the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project (VMAP) and the Biomarkers of Cognitive Decline Among Normal Individuals (BIOCARD). First, we plotted the graph measures and used coefficient of variation (CoV) and the Mann-Whitney U test to evaluate different methods’ effectiveness in removing site effects on the matrices and the derived graph measures. ComBat effectively eliminated site effects for global efficiency and modularity and outperformed the other two methods. However, all methods exhibited poor performance when harmonizing average betweenness centrality. Second, we tested whether our harmonization methods preserved correlations between age and graph measures. All methods except for CycleGAN in one direction improved correlations between age and global efficiency and between age and modularity from insignificant to significant with p-values less than 0.05.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationMedical Imaging 2024
Subtitle of host publicationImage Processing
EditorsOlivier Colliot, Jhimli Mitra
PublisherSPIE
ISBN (Electronic)9781510671560
DOIs
StatePublished - 2024
EventMedical Imaging 2024: Image Processing - San Diego, United States
Duration: Feb 19 2024Feb 22 2024

Publication series

NameProgress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE
Volume12926
ISSN (Print)1605-7422

Conference

ConferenceMedical Imaging 2024: Image Processing
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Diego
Period2/19/242/22/24

Keywords

  • ComBat
  • Connectivity matrix
  • CycleGAN
  • connectome
  • dMRI
  • graph measure
  • harmonization
  • mean shift

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
  • Biomaterials
  • Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging

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