MRI预测淀粉样蛋白PET效果差,根源是大脑病理与退行性变化不同步。
When Brains Disagree: Biological Ambiguity Underlies the Challenge of Amyloid PET Synthesis from Structural MRI

- 用分层数据控制生物状态,验证映射可学习但易受歧义干扰
- 引入血浆生物标志物后模型性能提升且稳定
- 突破瓶颈需多模态融合,而非堆砌模型复杂度
结构MRI到淀粉样蛋白PET的合成被提出作为阿尔茨海默病(AD)非侵入性评估的替代方案。然而,相同模型在不同研究中的表现差异巨大,且更复杂的架构未带来一致提升。这种不一致性可能源于根本性的生物学模糊性:MRI反映神经退行性变化,而PET检测淀粉样蛋白病理,二者在AD中常呈时间分离。因此,相似的MRI模式可能对应不同的淀粉样状态,导致一对多的模糊映射。本文通过两项受控实验检验该假设:首先,按淀粉样蛋白和神经退行性状态分层配对的MRI-PET数据,在控制分布下,标准合成模型可学习清晰映射;但引入数据模糊性后性能急剧下降,说明性能受限于数据歧义而非模型容量。其次,加入血浆生物标志物等正交生物学信息后,模型性能提升且稳定性恢复。结果表明,当前合成效果受限于内在生物学模糊性,稳定进展依赖多模态整合,而非架构复杂化。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Structural MRI-to-amyloid PET synthesis has been proposed as a non-invasive alternative for amyloid assessment in Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, reported performance of identical models varies widely across studies, and increasingly complex architectures have not led to consistent gains. This inconsistency is thought to be caused by a fundamental biological ambiguity: MRI captures neurodegeneration, while PET measures amyloid pathology - two processes that are often temporally decoupled in AD. As a result, similar MRI patterns may correspond to different amyloid states, creating ambiguous one-to-many mappings. MRI-to-amyloid PET synthesis may therefore be intrinsically ill-posed; however, this idea has yet to be tested scientifically. The aim of this work is to test this hypothesis through two controlled experiments. We first control the training distribution by stratifying paired MRI-PET data by amyloid and neurodegeneration status. Using two standard synthesis models under a controlled design, we show that biologically unambiguous mappings are learnable in isolation, but performance collapses when data ambiguity is introduced. This demonstrates that ambiguity in the data distribution, rather than architectural capacity, constrains performance. Second, we show that introducing orthogonal biological information in the form of plasma biomarkers resolves this ambiguity. When multimodal inputs are incorporated, performance improves and stability is restored. Together, these findings suggest that limited and inconsistent performance in MRI-to-amyloid PET synthesis is explained by intrinsic biological ambiguity, and that stable, meaningful progress requires multimodal integration rather than architectural complexity.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。