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ASDFormer: A Transformer with Mixtures of Pooling-Classifier Experts for Robust Autism Diagnosis and Biomarker Discovery

Created by
  • Haebom

Author

Mohammad Izadi, Mehran Safayani

Outline

This paper presents ASDFormer, a novel deep learning-based approach for the diagnosis and biomarker discovery of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ASD is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by disruptions in brain connectivity, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offers a noninvasive way to measure this connectivity. ASDFormer captures neural signals associated with autism by incorporating a pooled-classifier expert mixture (MoE) into a Transformer-based architecture that models interactions between regions of interest (ROIs). By integrating multiple expert branches with attention mechanisms, it adaptively highlights brain regions and connectivity patterns associated with autism, enabling improved classification performance and more interpretable identification of disorder-related biomarkers. Implemented on the ABIDE dataset, ASDFormer achieves state-of-the-art diagnostic accuracy and provides powerful insights into functional connectivity disruptions associated with ASD, demonstrating its potential as a biomarker discovery tool.

Takeaways, Limitations

Takeaways:
Improving the accuracy of ASD diagnosis through ASDFormer, a new architecture that combines Transformer and MoE.
Provides new insights into functional connectivity disruptions associated with ASD and suggests potential biomarker discovery.
Contributes to understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of ASD by providing more interpretable results than existing methods.
Limitations:
Since it was validated using only one ABIDE dataset, generalization performance needs to be verified on other datasets.
Failure to consider the diverse phenotypes of ASD. Future analyses of these diverse phenotypes are needed.
Increased computational cost and difficulty in interpretation due to the complexity of MoE.
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