Tree ensemble methods and parcelling to identify brain areas related to Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

For several years, machine learning approaches have been increasingly investigated in the neuroimaging field to help the diagnosis of dementia. To this end, this work proposes a new pattern recognition technique based on brain parcelling, group selection and tree ensemble algorithms. In addition to prediction performance competitive with more traditional approaches, the method provides easy interpretation about the brain regions involved in the prognosis of Alzheimer’s disease.