arXiv:2512.02032q-bio.NCcs.AI2025-12被引 1

提出混合隐空间模型,区分脑连接组的连续与离散变异因素。

Characterizing Continuous and Discrete Hybrid Latent Spaces for Structural Connectomes

  • 设计混合隐空间变分自编码器,同时建模连续与离散变量。
  • 离散隐空间识别扫描站点差异,调整兰德指数达0.65,显著优于传统方法。
  • 适用于大规模脑连接组分析,尤其适合研究多中心数据中的混杂因素。

结构连接组是映射不同脑区物理连接的详细图谱,对衰老、认知及神经退行性疾病研究至关重要。但其高维且密集互联的特性使其难以规模化分析。现有降维方法如PCA和自编码器生成连续隐空间,无法充分捕捉连接组中同时存在的连续(如连接强度)与离散因素(如成像站点)。为此,我们提出一种具有混合隐空间的变分自编码器(VAE),在无监督下建模两者。分析来自六项阿尔茨海默病研究的5761个连接组数据,涵盖10种采集协议,包含3579名女性、2182名男性,年龄22至102岁,其中4338例认知正常,809例轻度认知障碍(MCI),614例阿尔茨海默病(AD)。每个连接组基于BrainCOLOR图谱定义121个脑区。实验表明,离散隐空间能有效识别站点差异,调整兰德指数(ARI)达0.65,显著优于PCA及标准VAE+聚类方法(p < 0.05)。结果证明,该混合隐空间可在无监督下解耦连接组的多种变异来源,为大规模分析提供新工具。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Structural connectomes are detailed graphs that map how different brain regions are physically connected, offering critical insight into aging, cognition, and neurodegenerative diseases. However, these connectomes are high-dimensional and densely interconnected, which makes them difficult to interpret and analyze at scale. While low-dimensional spaces like PCA and autoencoders are often used to capture major sources of variation, their latent spaces are generally continuous and cannot fully reflect the mixed nature of variability in connectomes, which include both continuous (e.g., connectivity strength) and discrete factors (e.g., imaging site). Motivated by this, we propose a variational autoencoder (VAE) with a hybrid latent space that jointly models the discrete and continuous components. We analyze a large dataset of 5,761 connectomes from six Alzheimer's disease studies with ten acquisition protocols. Each connectome represents a single scan from a unique subject (3579 females, 2182 males), aged 22 to 102, with 4338 cognitively normal, 809 with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 614 with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Each connectome contains 121 brain regions defined by the BrainCOLOR atlas. We train our hybrid VAE in an unsupervised way and characterize what each latent component captures. We find that the discrete space is particularly effective at capturing subtle site-related differences, achieving an Adjusted Rand Index (ARI) of 0.65 with site labels, significantly outperforming PCA and a standard VAE followed by clustering (p < 0.05). These results demonstrate that the hybrid latent space can disentangle distinct sources of variability in connectomes in an unsupervised manner, offering potential for large-scale connectome analysis.

脑连接组混合隐空间无监督学习多中心数据

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