Attention over vulnerable brain regions associating cerebral palsy disorder and biological markers
Muhammad Hassan1, Jieqiong Lin1, Ahmed Ameen Fateh1
1Department of Radiology, Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
Insights
This study reveals how biological traits like age, gender, and weight impact brain development in children with cerebral palsy (CP) and healthy controls. Weight estimation showed the most significant differences between the two groups.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Biology
- Medical Imaging
Background:
- Cerebral palsy (CP) is a neurological disorder stemming from fetal brain ischemia and hypoxia.
- Monitoring early brain development in children with CP is crucial for effective intervention.
- Understanding the impact of biological traits (BTs) on brain development in both healthy controls (HC) and CP-affected children is essential.
Purpose of the Study:
- To associate biological traits (BTs) with neurodevelopment in healthy controls (HC) and children with cerebral palsy (CP).
- To investigate the underlying neurodevelopmental differences associated with BTs in HC and CP.
- To establish a benchmark for the association of BTs with brain development in HC and CP.
Main Methods:
- Utilized AWG-Net with customized spatial-channel (CSC) and multi-head self (MHA) attentions for analyzing brain development.
- Incorporated cumulative-dense structures to propagate susceptible brain regions to deeper layers.
- Trained the model using T1-w, T2-w, Flair, and Sag MRI sequences, annotated with age, gender, and weight.
Main Results:
- Age, gender, and weight significantly correlate with brain development in both HC and CP groups, with weight showing distinct patterns.
- Identified specific vulnerable brain regions associated with age and gender, noting commonalities and discrepancies between HC and CP.
- AWG-Net demonstrated differential learning trends for HC and CP concerning brain development and gender, with slight variations for weight.
Conclusions:
- Weight estimation is more affected by CP-vulnerable brain regions than age and gender.
- T1-weighted MRI is suitable for assessing age, weight, and gender in neurodevelopmental studies.
- Learned trends in brain development and gender association differ between healthy controls and children with cerebral palsy.
Introduction:
Cerebral palsy (CP) is a neurological disorder caused by cerebral ischemia and hypoxia during fetal brain development.Early intervention in CP favors medications and therapies; however, monitoring early brain development in children with CP is critical. It is essential to thoroughly examine brain-vulnerable regions associated with biological traits (BTs).Variations in BTs were evident in children with CP; however, it is critical to explore the BTs' impact on the brains of healthy controls (HC) and CP-disordered children.
Objective:
This study associates BTs with HC and CP children.This study investigates the neurodevelopment of HC and CP underlying BTs. This study establishes a benchmark for the association of BT with HC and CP children.
Method:
The proposed AWG-Net is composed of customized spatial-channel (CSC) and multi-head self (MHA) attentions, where CSC blocks are incorporated at the first few stages, MHA at later stages, and cumulative-dense structures to propagate susceptible regions to deeper layers. The training samples include T1-w, T2-w, Flair, and Sag, annotated with age, gender, and weight.
Results:
The significant results for HC and CP are age (HC: MAE = 1.05, MCS10=85.63, R2=0.844; CP: MAE = 1.16, MCS10=84.79, R2=0.717), gender (HC: Acc = 82.98%, CP: Acc = 82.00%), and weight (HC: MAE = 4.65, MCS10=56.30, R2=0.78; CP: MAE = 2.85, MCS10=70.24, R2=0.82). Vulnerable regions for age are the cerebellar hemisphere, frontal, occipital, and parietal bones in HC and inconsistent in CP. HC and CP commonalities are in the frontal bone and cerebellar hemisphere with HC and discrepant in the occipital and temporal bones for CP. Similarly, gender differences are found for HC and CP.
Conclusion:
Age and gender are marginally less affected by the brain regions vulnerable to CP than weight estimation. T1-w is appropriate for age, weight, and gender. The learned trends are different for HC and CP in brain development and gender while slightly different in the case of weight.
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