Prion disease diagnosis using subject-specific imaging biomarkers within a multi-kernel Gaussian process

Publication date: Available online 25 October 2019Source: NeuroImage: ClinicalAuthor(s): Liane S. Canas, Carole H. Sudre, Enrico De Vita, Akin Nihat, Tze How Mok, Catherine F. Slattery, Ross W. Paterson, Alexander J.M. Foulkes, Harpreet Hyare, M. Jorge Cardoso, John Thornton, Jonathan M. Schott, Frederik Barkhof, John Collinge, Sébastien Ourselin, Simon Mead, Marc ModatAbstractPrion diseases are a group of rare neurodegenerative conditions characterised by a high rate of progression and highly heterogeneous phenotypes. Whilst the most common form of prion disease occurs sporadically (sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, sCJD), other forms are caused by prion protein gene mutations, or exposure to prions in the diet or by medical procedures, such us surgeries. To date, there are no accurate quantitative imaging biomarkers that can be used to predict the future clinical diagnosis of a healthy subject, or to quantify the progression of symptoms over time. Besides, CJD is commonly mistaken for other forms of dementia. Due to the heterogeneity of phenotypes and the lack of a consistent geometrical pattern of disease progression, the approaches used to study other types of neurodegenerative diseases are not satisfactory to capture the progression of human form of prion disease. In this paper, using a tailored framework, we aim to classify and stratify patients with prion disease, according to the severity of their illness. The framework is initialised with the extraction of subject...
Source: NeuroImage: Clinical - Category: Radiology Source Type: research