# Identification of Causal Relationship between Amyloid-beta Accumulation and Alzheimer's Disease Progression via Counterfactual Inference

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.01389 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01389/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Jul 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
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- [Neural Message Passing for Quantum Chemistry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.01212/) (2017)
- [Convolutional Neural Networks on Graphs with Fast Localized Spectral Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09375/) (2016)
- [Modeling Relational Data with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06103/) (2017)
- [Link Prediction Based on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09691/) (2018)
- [Estimation and Inference of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects using Random Forests](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.04342/) (2015)
- [Deep & Cross Network for Ad Click Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.05123/) (2017)
- [Learning Representations for Counterfactual Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.03661/) (2016)
- [Learning Counterfactual Representations for Estimating Individual Dose-Response Curves](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00981/) (2019)
- [Estimating the Effects of Continuous-valued Interventions using Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12326/) (2020)
- [VCNet and Functional Targeted Regularization For Learning Causal Effects of Continuous Treatments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07861/) (2021)
- [Matching in Selective and Balanced Representation Space for Treatment Effects Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.06828/) (2020)
- [Exploring Transformer Backbones for Heterogeneous Treatment Effect Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.01336/) (2022)
- [Mean-field theory of graph neural networks in graph partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.11908/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that is beginning with amyloidosis, followed by neuronal loss and deterioration in structure, function, and cognition. The accumulation of amyloid-beta in the brain, measured through 18F-florbetapir (AV45) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, has been widely used for early diagnosis of AD. However, the relationship between amyloid-beta accumulation and AD pathophysiology remains unclear, and causal inference approaches are needed to uncover how amyloid-beta levels can impact AD development. In this paper, we propose a graph varying coefficient neural network (GVCNet) for estimating the individual treatment effect with continuous treatment levels using a graph convolutional neural network. We highlight the potential of causal inference approaches, including GVCNet, for measuring the regional causal connections between amyloid-beta accumulation and AD pathophysiology, which may serve as a robust tool for early diagnosis and tailored care.