# Artemis: Anatomy-Resolved inTervention for Eliminating Multimodal NeuroImage confounderS

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.18287 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.18287/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [Interpretable and Generalizable Graph Learning via Stochastic Attention Mechanism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12987/) (2022)
- [Learning Causally Invariant Representations for Out-of-Distribution Generalization on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05441/) (2022)
- [Causal Attention for Interpretable and Generalizable Graph Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.15089/) (2021)
- [Debiasing Graph Neural Networks via Learning Disentangled Causal Substructure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14107/) (2022)
- [CI-GNN: A Granger Causality-Inspired Graph Neural Network for Interpretable Brain Network-Based Psychiatric Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.01642/) (2023)
- [Contrasformer: A Brain Network Contrastive Transformer for Neurodegenerative Condition Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10944/) (2024)
- [Biologically Plausible Brain Graph Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08958/) (2025)
- [Interpretable Spatio-Temporal Embedding for Brain Structural-Effective Network with Ordinary Differential Equation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13190/) (2024)
- [A Heterogeneous Graph Neural Network Fusing Functional and Structural Connectivity for MCI Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08424/) (2024)
- [Cross-modal Causal Intervention for Alzheimer's Disease Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13956/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multimodal neuroimaging, integrating functional connectivity from fMRI and structural connectivity from DTI, enables non-invasive analysis of brain networks using graph neural networks. However, demographic factors such as age and sex systematically confound the relationship between brain connectivity and clinical outcomes, causing GNNs to exploit spurious shortcuts rather than learning causally invariant representations. While recent causal GNN methods introduce causality at the graph-modeling level, their causal mechanisms remain domain-agnostic without accounting for the real-world confounders inherent in clinical neuroimaging data. Moreover, brain networks are constructed from atlas-based parcellations where each region exhibits distinct sensitivity to demographic factors, necessitating region-aware adjustment. We propose Artemis, a region-level causal framework that bridges this gap with causal intervention at each brain region independently by learning region-specific confounder representations with lightweight parameters. Our adjustment comprehensively utilized the multimodal functional and structural features for graph reasoning as a plug-in module compatible with arbitrary GNN backbones. Experiments on three benchmarks, ADNI for disease diagnosis, OASIS for dementia staging, and HCP for sex classification, demonstrate consistent improvements over representative GNN-based baselines. Multiple supporting experiments further demonstrate statistical significance and neuroscientific interpretability.