A Multimodal Approach Integrating Convolutional and Recurrent Neural Networks for Alzheimer's Disease Temporal Progression Prediction

Abstract

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) poses a substantial healthcare challenge marked by cognitive decline and a lack of definitive treatments. As the global population ages, the prevalence of AD escalates, underscoring the need for more advanced diagnostic techniques. Current single-modality methods have limitations, emphasizing the critical need for early detection and precise diagnosis to facilitate timely interventions and the development of effective therapies. We propose a novel multimodal medical diagnostic framework for AD employing a hybrid deep learning model. This framework integrates a 3D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to extract detailed intra-slice features from MRI volumes and a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network to capture intricate inter-sequence patterns indicative of AD progression. By leveraging longitudinal MRI data alongside spatial, temporal, biomarkers, and cognitive scores, our framework significantly enhances diagnostic accuracy, particularly in the early stages of the disease. We incorporate Grad-CAM to enhance the interpretability of MRI-based diagnoses by highlighting relevant brain regions. This multimodal approach achieves a promising accuracy of 92.65%, outperforming state-of-the-art works by a margin of 6%.