Researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), in partnership with the Queensland University of Technology, have developed what could be the world's first AI-based benchmark for measuring brain atrophy.
The researchers used AI to develop a set of artificial MRI brain images with predefined signs of neurodegeneration in the cortex region, an area of the brain most affected by neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. The AI-based benchmark allows researchers to set the amount and location of their target brain degeneration to check how a method of cortical thickness (width of gray matter of the human cortex) quantification performs. This technique can test the sensitivity of existing methods of measuring brain atrophy to a minuscule level – as little as 0.01 millimetres.
This is significant because cortical atrophy, or the thinning of the brain's cortex, can start up to ten years before clinical symptoms of Alzheimer's appear, as per medical experts. But measuring its progression has been challenging due to the fact that changes in the thickness of the brain's cortex are really miniature.
There has been a general lack of datasets to check the sensitivity of the onset or progression of neurodegenerative diseases. The latest development at CSIRO is filling this specific gap. The said benchmark MRI dataset is now publicly available for use by clinicians and scientists in their own assessments of methods of quantifying cortical thickness.
CSIRO said their AI benchmarking technique can potentially lead to a "better understanding of dementia and other debilitating brain diseases." It can also be possibly used to predict the expected level of cortical degeneration over time, it added.
The findings were published in the journal Medical Image Analysis.
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