Classification of cognitive level of patients with leukoaraiosis on the basis of linear and non-linear functional connectivity

Leukoaraiosis (LA) describes diffuse white matter abnormalities apparent in computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance (MR) brain scans. Patients with LA generally show varying degrees of cognitive impairment, which can be classified as cognitively normal (CN), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and dementia. However, a consistent relationship between the degree of LA and the level of cognitive impairment has not yet been established. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore possible neuroimaging biomarkers for classification of cognitive level in LA. Functional connectivity (FC) between brain regions was calculated using Pearson's correlation coefficient (PCC), maximal information coefficient (MIC), and extended maximal information coefficient (eMIC). Next, FCs with high discriminative power for different cognitive levels in LA were used as features for classification based on support vector machine. CN and MCI were classified with accuracies of 75.0, 61.9, and 91.1% based on features from PCC, MIC, and eMIC, respectively. MCI and dementia were classified with accuracies of 80.1, 86.2, and 87.4% based on features from PCC, MIC, and eMIC, respectively. CN and dementia were classified with accuracies of 80.1, 89.9, and 94.4% based on features from PCC, MIC, and eMIC, respectively. Our results suggest that features extracted from fMRI were efficient for classification of cognitive impairment level in LA, especially, when features were based on a non-linear method (eMIC).