A fuzzy approach to evaluating the risk of dementia by analyzing the cortical thickness from MRI

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia which affects individuals of elderly. Reports indicated that there is an increase of AD cases in aged societies. The real causes of AD remain mysterious where the current medication can only be used to delay, not to cure, the disease. Our research aims to study the disease by giving a preliminary evaluation of the brain status of the patient by applying the fuzzy theory. Since the literature reports that subjects with increasing learning and memory impairments present a thinner cortical thickness, our study has previously focused on evaluating the brain cortex taken from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) tests. The developed fuzzy system is now able to monitor separately left and right brain hemispheres so to monitor the thinnest side of the brain. Moreover, the proposed fuzzy model can better define the boundaries between possible outcomes (MCI, Healthy or Schizophrenia). Experimental results are given to verify the applicability of the presented work.