Autism Classification Using Brain Functional Connectivity Dynamics and Machine Learning

The goal of the present study is to identify autism using machine learning techniques and resting-state brain imaging data, leveraging the temporal variability of the functional connections (FC) as the only information. We estimated and compared the FC variability across brain regions between typical, healthy subjects and autistic population by analyzing brain imaging data from a world-wide multi-site database known as ABIDE (Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange). Our analysis revealed that patients diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show increased FC variability in several brain regions that are associated with low FC variability in the typical brain. We then used the enhanced FC variability of brain regions as features for training machine learning models for ASD classification and achieved 65% accuracy in identification of ASD versus control subjects within the dataset. We also used node strength estimated from number of functional connections per node averaged over the whole scan as features for ASD classification.The results reveal that the dynamic FC measures outperform or are comparable with the static FC measures in predicting ASD.