A combined MRI biomarker approach using a non-standard Multiple Factor Analysis

Abstract : In medical applications, various MRI biomarkers, which are extracted from different MRI modalities, are used to detect physiologic abnormalities but different biomarkers are usually sensitive to different aspects of the disease. Thus, it would be interesting to use the information carried by multiple biomarkers, especially in the context of clinical trials where the efficiency of a treatment should be judged as precisely as possible. This paper proposes an approach that combined various MRI biomarkers in the context of a Multiple Sclerosis (MS) clinical trial. The method mainly includes four steps: After extracting the biomarkers from different MRI modalities, a histogram analysis is performed followed by a Multiple Factor Analysis (MFA) to produce linear combinations of the MRI biomarkers and finally, a Hierarchical Clustering based on the MFA results is executed. The aim of this approach is to conclude more effectively on the effect of a treatment in a clinical trial.