ALERT: Atlas-Based Low Estimation Rank Tensor Approach to Detect Autism Spectrum Disorder

In response to a stimulus, distinct areas of the human brain are activated. Also, it is known that the regions interact with one another. This functional connectivity is helpful to diagnose any neurological abnormality, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This work proposes an approach to construct a functional connectivity network from fMRI image data. For obtaining a functional connectivity network, the time series component of fMRI data is used and from it correlation matrix is calculated showing the degree of interaction among the brain regions. To map the different regions of a brain, the brain atlas is considered. This essentially yields a low-rank tensor approximation of the functional connectivity matrix. A 2D convolutional deep neural network model is built to categorize topological similarity in the functional connectivity matrices related to ASD and typically developing control. The proposed approach has been tested with ABIDE dataset of fMRI data for autism spectrum disorder. Several brain atlases have been considered in the experiment. With a majority voting concept on the results from the atlases, the proposed technique reveals an ASD detection accuracy of 84.79%, which is significantly comparable to the state of the art techniques.Clinical Relevance- ASD is one of the least understood neurological disorders that has been recently recognized to have major sociological consequences on an affected individual's life. A symptom-based diagnosis is in practice. However, this requires prolonged behavioural examinations under the supervision of a highly skilled multidisciplinary team. An early and cost-effective detection using an fMRI image is considered an appropriate, comprehensive, and advanced treatment plan.