31,682 research outputs found
Testing for Differences in Gaussian Graphical Models: Applications to Brain Connectivity
Functional brain networks are well described and estimated from data with
Gaussian Graphical Models (GGMs), e.g. using sparse inverse covariance
estimators. Comparing functional connectivity of subjects in two populations
calls for comparing these estimated GGMs. Our goal is to identify differences
in GGMs known to have similar structure. We characterize the uncertainty of
differences with confidence intervals obtained using a parametric distribution
on parameters of a sparse estimator. Sparse penalties enable statistical
guarantees and interpretable models even in high-dimensional and low-sample
settings. Characterizing the distributions of sparse models is inherently
challenging as the penalties produce a biased estimator. Recent work invokes
the sparsity assumptions to effectively remove the bias from a sparse estimator
such as the lasso. These distributions can be used to give confidence intervals
on edges in GGMs, and by extension their differences. However, in the case of
comparing GGMs, these estimators do not make use of any assumed joint structure
among the GGMs. Inspired by priors from brain functional connectivity we derive
the distribution of parameter differences under a joint penalty when parameters
are known to be sparse in the difference. This leads us to introduce the
debiased multi-task fused lasso, whose distribution can be characterized in an
efficient manner. We then show how the debiased lasso and multi-task fused
lasso can be used to obtain confidence intervals on edge differences in GGMs.
We validate the techniques proposed on a set of synthetic examples as well as
neuro-imaging dataset created for the study of autism
Voxel selection in fMRI data analysis based on sparse representation
Multivariate pattern analysis approaches toward detection of brain regions from fMRI data have been gaining attention recently. In this study, we introduce an iterative sparse-representation-based algorithm for detection of voxels in functional MRI (fMRI) data with task relevant information. In each iteration of the algorithm, a linear programming problem is solved and a sparse weight vector is subsequently obtained. The final weight vector is the mean of those obtained in all iterations. The characteristics of our algorithm are as follows: 1) the weight vector (output) is sparse; 2) the magnitude of each entry of the weight vector represents the significance of its corresponding variable or feature in a classification or regression problem; and 3) due to the convergence of this algorithm, a stable weight vector is obtained. To demonstrate the validity of our algorithm and illustrate its application, we apply the algorithm to the Pittsburgh Brain Activity Interpretation Competition 2007 functional fMRI dataset for selecting the voxels, which are the most relevant to the tasks of the subjects. Based on this dataset, the aforementioned characteristics of our algorithm are analyzed, and a comparison between our method with the univariate general-linear-model-based statistical parametric mapping is performed. Using our method, a combination of voxels are selected based on the principle of effective/sparse representation of a task. Data analysis results in this paper show that this combination of voxels is suitable for decoding tasks and demonstrate the effectiveness of our method
Improving accuracy and power with transfer learning using a meta-analytic database
Typical cohorts in brain imaging studies are not large enough for systematic
testing of all the information contained in the images. To build testable
working hypotheses, investigators thus rely on analysis of previous work,
sometimes formalized in a so-called meta-analysis. In brain imaging, this
approach underlies the specification of regions of interest (ROIs) that are
usually selected on the basis of the coordinates of previously detected
effects. In this paper, we propose to use a database of images, rather than
coordinates, and frame the problem as transfer learning: learning a
discriminant model on a reference task to apply it to a different but related
new task. To facilitate statistical analysis of small cohorts, we use a sparse
discriminant model that selects predictive voxels on the reference task and
thus provides a principled procedure to define ROIs. The benefits of our
approach are twofold. First it uses the reference database for prediction, i.e.
to provide potential biomarkers in a clinical setting. Second it increases
statistical power on the new task. We demonstrate on a set of 18 pairs of
functional MRI experimental conditions that our approach gives good prediction.
In addition, on a specific transfer situation involving different scanners at
different locations, we show that voxel selection based on transfer learning
leads to higher detection power on small cohorts.Comment: MICCAI, Nice : France (2012
A Sparse Graph-Structured Lasso Mixed Model for Genetic Association with Confounding Correction
While linear mixed model (LMM) has shown a competitive performance in
correcting spurious associations raised by population stratification, family
structures, and cryptic relatedness, more challenges are still to be addressed
regarding the complex structure of genotypic and phenotypic data. For example,
geneticists have discovered that some clusters of phenotypes are more
co-expressed than others. Hence, a joint analysis that can utilize such
relatedness information in a heterogeneous data set is crucial for genetic
modeling.
We proposed the sparse graph-structured linear mixed model (sGLMM) that can
incorporate the relatedness information from traits in a dataset with
confounding correction. Our method is capable of uncovering the genetic
associations of a large number of phenotypes together while considering the
relatedness of these phenotypes. Through extensive simulation experiments, we
show that the proposed model outperforms other existing approaches and can
model correlation from both population structure and shared signals. Further,
we validate the effectiveness of sGLMM in the real-world genomic dataset on two
different species from plants and humans. In Arabidopsis thaliana data, sGLMM
behaves better than all other baseline models for 63.4% traits. We also discuss
the potential causal genetic variation of Human Alzheimer's disease discovered
by our model and justify some of the most important genetic loci.Comment: Code available at https://github.com/YeWenting/sGLM
Identifying progressive imaging genetic patterns via multi-task sparse canonical correlation analysis: a longitudinal study of the ADNI cohort
Motivation
Identifying the genetic basis of the brain structure, function and disorder by using the imaging quantitative traits (QTs) as endophenotypes is an important task in brain science. Brain QTs often change over time while the disorder progresses and thus understanding how the genetic factors play roles on the progressive brain QT changes is of great importance and meaning. Most existing imaging genetics methods only analyze the baseline neuroimaging data, and thus those longitudinal imaging data across multiple time points containing important disease progression information are omitted.
Results
We propose a novel temporal imaging genetic model which performs the multi-task sparse canonical correlation analysis (T-MTSCCA). Our model uses longitudinal neuroimaging data to uncover that how single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) play roles on affecting brain QTs over the time. Incorporating the relationship of the longitudinal imaging data and that within SNPs, T-MTSCCA could identify a trajectory of progressive imaging genetic patterns over the time. We propose an efficient algorithm to solve the problem and show its convergence. We evaluate T-MTSCCA on 408 subjects from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative database with longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging data and genetic data available. The experimental results show that T-MTSCCA performs either better than or equally to the state-of-the-art methods. In particular, T-MTSCCA could identify higher canonical correlation coefficients and capture clearer canonical weight patterns. This suggests that T-MTSCCA identifies time-consistent and time-dependent SNPs and imaging QTs, which further help understand the genetic basis of the brain QT changes over the time during the disease progression.
Availability and implementation
The software and simulation data are publicly available at https://github.com/dulei323/TMTSCCA.
Supplementary information
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online
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