MesoSCOUT: A novel tool for revealing mesoscale organization in the white-matter connectome

We present MesoSCOUT (Mesoscale Structural Connectome Order-complex Unveiling Topology), a framework for characterizing white matter connectivity using a method developed from computational algebraic topology: persistent homology (PH) via clique topology. Applying this method to schizophrenia, we uncover a novel, mesoscale perspective of the differences in the white-matter connectome between healthy controls (HC) and subjects with schizophrenia (SCH). We extract and compare topological motifs found in the structural connectomes of the subjects in the two groups and find significant differences. We explore the overlap of mesoscale structures found in two different datasets, COBRE (Center of Biomedical Research Excellence) and HCP (Human Connectome Project). Differences in acquisition usually render experiments recorded on different scanners incomparable, but MesoSCOUT enables cross-dataset comparisons. Our method offers a way to establish connectomic fingerprinting that could lead to a neuroimaging-based diagnosis of schizophrenia and other psychiatric and neurological conditions as well as the development of new treatments.