🍩 Database of Original & Non-Theoretical Uses of Topology

(found 3 matches in 0.00144s)
  1. Topology-Based Kernels With Application to Inference Problems in Alzheimer’s Disease (2011)

    Deepti Pachauri, Chris Hinrichs, Moo K. Chung, Sterling C. Johnson, Vikas Singh
    Abstract Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research has recently witnessed a great deal of activity focused on developing new statistical learning tools for automated inference using imaging data. The workhorse for many of these techniques is the Support Vector Machine (SVM) framework (or more generally kernel based methods). Most of these require, as a first step, specification of a kernel matrix between input examples (i.e., images). The inner product between images Ii and Ij in a feature space can generally be written in closed form, and so it is convenient to treat as “given”. However, in certain neuroimaging applications such an assumption becomes problematic. As an example, it is rather challenging to provide a scalar measure of similarity between two instances of highly attributed data such as cortical thickness measures on cortical surfaces. Note that cortical thickness is known to be discriminative for neurological disorders, so leveraging such information in an inference framework, especially within a multi-modal method, is potentially advantageous. But despite being clinically meaningful, relatively few works have successfully exploited this measure for classification or regression. Motivated by these applications, our paper presents novel techniques to compute similarity matrices for such topologically-based attributed data. Our ideas leverage recent developments to characterize signals (e.g., cortical thickness) motivated by the persistence of their topological features, leading to a scheme for simple constructions of kernel matrices. As a proof of principle, on a dataset of 356 subjects from the ADNI study, we report good performance on several statistical inference tasks without any feature selection, dimensionality reduction, or parameter tuning.

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  2. Topological Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease Using Betti Curves (2021)

    Ameer Saadat-Yazdi, Rayna Andreeva, Rik Sarkar
    Abstract Alzheimer’s disease is a debilitating disease in the elderly, and is an increasing burden to the society due to an aging population. In this paper, we apply topological data analysis to structural MRI scans of the brain, and show that topological invariants make accurate predictors for Alzheimer’s. Using the construct of Betti Curves, we first show that topology is a good predictor of Age. Then we develop an approach to factor out the topological signature of age from Betti curves, and thus obtain accurate detection of Alzheimer’s disease. Experimental results show that topological features used with standard classifiers perform comparably to recently developed convolutional neural networks. These results imply that topology is a major aspect of structural changes due to aging and Alzheimer’s. We expect this relation will generate further insights for both early detection and better understanding of the disease.

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  3. Topological Methods Reveal High and Low Functioning Neuro-Phenotypes Within Fragile X Syndrome (2014)

    David Romano, Monica Nicolau, Eve-Marie Quintin, Paul K. Mazaika, Amy A. Lightbody, Heather Cody Hazlett, Joseph Piven, Gunnar Carlsson, Allan L. Reiss
    Abstract Fragile X syndrome (FXS), due to mutations of the FMR1 gene, is the most common known inherited cause of developmental disability as well as the most common single-gene risk factor for autism. Our goal was to examine variation in brain structure in FXS with topological data analysis (TDA), and to assess how such variation is associated with measures of IQ and autism-related behaviors. To this end, we analyzed imaging and behavioral data from young boys (n = 52; aged 1.57–4.15 years) diagnosed with FXS. Application of topological methods to structural MRI data revealed two large subgroups within the study population. Comparison of these subgroups showed significant between-subgroup neuroanatomical differences similar to those previously reported to distinguish children with FXS from typically developing controls (e.g., enlarged caudate). In addition to neuroanatomy, the groups showed significant differences in IQ and autism severity scores. These results suggest that despite arising from a single gene mutation, FXS may encompass two biologically, and clinically separable phenotypes. In addition, these findings underscore the potential of TDA as a powerful tool in the search for biological phenotypes of neuropsychiatric disorders. Hum Brain Mapp 35:4904–4915, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.