Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39692946›Full record

ArticleBrain informatics2024

Explainable brain age prediction: a comparative evaluation of morphometric and deep learning pipelines.

Maria Luigia Natalia De Bonis, Giuseppe Fasano, Angela Lombardi, Carmelo Ardito, Antonio Ferrara, Eugenio Di Sciascio, Tommaso Di Noia

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Brain informatics, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
6citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
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

6 citing papers in PubMed.

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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

7 authors.

Maria Luigia Natalia De Bonis *Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via E. Orabona, 4, 70125, Bari, Italy.
Giuseppe Fasano *Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via E. Orabona, 4, 70125, Bari, Italy.
Angela LombardiDepartment of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via E. Orabona, 4, 70125, Bari, Italy. angela.lombardi@poliba.it.
Carmelo ArditoDepartment of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via E. Orabona, 4, 70125, Bari, Italy.
Antonio FerraraDepartment of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via E. Orabona, 4, 70125, Bari, Italy.
Eugenio Di SciascioDepartment of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via E. Orabona, 4, 70125, Bari, Italy.
Tommaso Di NoiaDepartment of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via E. Orabona, 4, 70125, Bari, Italy.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Brain age, a biomarker reflecting brain health relative to chronological age, is increasingly used in neuroimaging to detect early signs of neurodegenerative diseases and support personalized treatment plans. Two primary approaches for brain age prediction have emerged: morphometric feature extraction from MRI scans and deep learning (DL) applied to raw MRI data. However, a systematic comparison of these methods regarding performance, interpretability, and clinical utility has been limited. In this study, we present a comparative evaluation of two pipelines: one using morphometric features from FreeSurfer and the other employing 3D convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Using a multisite neuroimaging dataset, we assessed both model performance and the interpretability of predictions through eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods, applying SHAP to the feature-based pipeline and Grad-CAM and DeepSHAP to the CNN-based pipeline. Our results show comparable performance between the two pipelines in Leave-One-Site-Out (LOSO) validation, achieving state-of-the-art performance on the independent test set (

Indexed as

Brain age predictionConvolutional neural networksEXplainable Artificial IntelligenceMorphometry

Identifiers

PMID39692946
PMCPMC11655902

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Registered trials

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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.