Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34758867›Full record

ArticleAlzheimer's research & therapy2021

Boosting the diagnostic power of amyloid-β PET using a data-driven spatially informed classifier for decision support.

Ashwin V Venkataraman, Wenjia Bai, Alex Whittington, James F Myers, Eugenii A Rabiner, Anne Lingford-Hughes, Paul M Matthews, Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Alzheimer's research & therapy, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
0.3field-weighted citation impact, top 42% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed, 3 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Beyond binary classification: Comparing three region-based multi-phase Aβ staging systems.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.

Ashwin V VenkataramanDepartment of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, 5th Floor Burlington Danes Building, 160 Du Cane Road, London, W12 0NN, UK. a.venkataraman@imperial.ac.uk.ORCID 0000-0001-7977-1948
Wenjia BaiDepartment of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, 5th Floor Burlington Danes Building, 160 Du Cane Road, London, W12 0NN, UK.
Alex WhittingtonInvicro LLC, London, UK.
James F MyersDepartment of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, 5th Floor Burlington Danes Building, 160 Du Cane Road, London, W12 0NN, UK.
Eugenii A RabinerInvicro LLC, London, UK.
Anne Lingford-HughesDepartment of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, 5th Floor Burlington Danes Building, 160 Du Cane Road, London, W12 0NN, UK.
Paul M MatthewsDepartment of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, 5th Floor Burlington Danes Building, 160 Du Cane Road, London, W12 0NN, UK.
Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative
Imperial College London · GBInvicro (United Kingdom) · GBUK Dementia Research Institute · GB

Funding

Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative - SupplementU01AG024904 · NIA · NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE RES &EDUC · PI WEINER, MICHAEL W · 2004 to 2015
$121.0M
CIHRDepartment of HealthMedical Research Council G0100811Medical Research Council G0300665Medical Research Council G0601966Medical Research Council G0900897Medical Research Council G9409531Medical Research Council G9409634Medical Research Council G9901399Medical Research Council MC_PC_17114Medical Research Council MR/K501013/1Medical Research Council MR/M024903/1Medical Research Council MR/N026934/1NIA NIH HHS U01 AG024904
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundAmyloid-β (Aβ) PET has emerged as clinically useful for more accurate diagnosis of patients with cognitive decline. Aβ deposition is a necessary cause or response to the cellular pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Usual clinical and research interpretation of amyloid PET does not fully utilise all information regarding the spatial distribution of signal. We present a data-driven, spatially informed classifier to boost the diagnostic power of amyloid PET in AD.

methodsVoxel-wise k-means clustering of amyloid-positive voxels was performed; clusters were mapped to brain anatomy and tested for their associations by diagnostic category and disease severity with 758 amyloid PET scans from volunteers in the AD continuum from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). A machine learning approach based on this spatially constrained model using an optimised quadratic support vector machine was developed for automatic classification of scans for AD vs non-AD pathology.

resultsThis classifier boosted the accuracy of classification of AD scans to 81% using the amyloid PET alone with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.91 compared to other spatial methods. This increased sensitivity to detect AD by 15% and the AUC by 9% compared to the use of a composite region of interest SUVr.

conclusionsThe diagnostic classification accuracy of amyloid PET was improved using an automated data-driven spatial classifier. Our classifier highlights the importance of considering the spatial variation in Aβ PET signal for optimal interpretation of scans. The algorithm now is available to be evaluated prospectively as a tool for automated clinical decision support in research settings.

Indexed as

Alzheimer DiseaseCognitive DysfunctionAmyloid beta-PeptidesHumansNeuroimagingPositron-Emission TomographyAmyloid beta-PeptidesAlzheimer’sAmyloid clustersAmyloid PETAutomated decisionClusteringMachine learning

Identifiers

PMID34758867
PMCPMC8582159
OpenAlexW3212409089

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.