skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Deep learning predicts all-cause mortality from longitudinal total-body DXA imaging
Abstract Background Mortality research has identified biomarkers predictive of all-cause mortality risk. Most of these markers, such as body mass index, are predictive cross-sectionally, while for others the longitudinal change has been shown to be predictive, for instance greater-than-average muscle and weight loss in older adults. And while sometimes markers are derived from imaging modalities such as DXA, full scans are rarely used. This study builds on that knowledge and tests two hypotheses to improve all-cause mortality prediction. The first hypothesis is that features derived from raw total-body DXA imaging using deep learning are predictive of all-cause mortality with and without clinical risk factors, meanwhile, the second hypothesis states that sequential total-body DXA scans and recurrent neural network models outperform comparable models using only one observation with and without clinical risk factors. Methods Multiple deep neural network architectures were designed to test theses hypotheses. The models were trained and evaluated on data from the 16-year-long Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study including over 15,000 scans from over 3000 older, multi-race male and female adults. This study further used explainable AI techniques to interpret the predictions and evaluate the contribution of different inputs. Results The results demonstrate that longitudinal total-body DXA scans are predictive of all-cause mortality and improve performance of traditional mortality prediction models. On a held-out test set, the strongest model achieves an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve of 0.79. Conclusion This study demonstrates the efficacy of deep learning for the analysis of DXA medical imaging in a cross-sectional and longitudinal setting. By analyzing the trained deep learning models, this work also sheds light on what constitutes healthy aging in a diverse cohort.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1920304
PAR ID:
10371721
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Communications Medicine
Volume:
2
Issue:
1
ISSN:
2730-664X
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Abstract ObjectivesBlack older adults have a higher vascular burden compared to non‐Hispanic White (NHW) older adults, which may put them at risk for a form of depression known as vascular depression (VaDep). The literature examining VaDep in Black older adults is sparse. The current study addressed this important gap by examining whether vascular burden was associated with depressive symptoms in Black older adults. MethodsParticipants included 113 Black older adults from the Healthy Brain Project, a substudy of the Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study. In multiple regression analyses, clinical vascular burden (sum of vascular conditions) and white matter hyperintensity (WMH) volume predicted depressive symptoms as measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, controlling for demographic variables. Follow‐up analyses compared the associations in the Black subsample and in 179 NHW older adults. ResultsHigher total WMH volume, but not clinically‐defined vascular burden, predicted higher concurrent depressive symptoms and higher average depressive symptoms over 4 years. Similar associations were found between uncinate fasciculus (UF) WMHs and concurrent depressive symptoms and between superior longitudinal fasciculus WMHs and average depressive symptoms. The association between depressive symptoms and UF WMH was stronger in Black compared to NHW individuals. ConclusionThis research is consistent with the VaDep hypothesis and extends it to Black older adults, a group that has historically been underrepresented in the literature. Results highlight WMH in the UF as particularly relevant to depressive symptoms in Black older adults and suggest this group may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of WMH. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract Falls are among the most common cause of decreased mobility and independence in older adults and rank as one of the most severe public health problems with frequent fatal consequences. In the present study, gait characteristics from 171 community-dwelling older adults were evaluated to determine their predictive ability for future falls using a wearable system. Participants wore a wearable sensor (inertial measurement unit, IMU) affixed to the sternum and performed a 10-m walking test. Measures of gait variability, complexity, and smoothness were extracted from each participant, and prospective fall incidence was evaluated over the following 6-months. Gait parameters were refined to better represent features for a random forest classifier for the fall-risk classification utilizing three experiments. The results show that the best-trained model for faller classification used both linear and nonlinear gait parameters and achieved an overall 81.6 ± 0.7% accuracy, 86.7 ± 0.5% sensitivity, 80.3 ± 0.2% specificity in the blind test. These findings augment the wearable sensor's potential as an ambulatory fall risk identification tool in community-dwelling settings. Furthermore, they highlight the importance of gait features that rely less on event detection methods, and more on time series analysis techniques. Fall prevention is a critical component in older individuals’ healthcare, and simple models based on gait-related tasks and a wearable IMU sensor can determine the risk of future falls. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract Accurate prediction of postoperative complications can inform shared decisions regarding prognosis, preoperative risk-reduction, and postoperative resource use. We hypothesized that multi-task deep learning models would outperform conventional machine learning models in predicting postoperative complications, and that integrating high-resolution intraoperative physiological time series would result in more granular and personalized health representations that would improve prognostication compared to preoperative predictions. In a longitudinal cohort study of 56,242 patients undergoing 67,481 inpatient surgical procedures at a university medical center, we compared deep learning models with random forests and XGBoost for predicting nine common postoperative complications using preoperative, intraoperative, and perioperative patient data. Our study indicated several significant results across experimental settings that suggest the utility of deep learning for capturing more precise representations of patient health for augmented surgical decision support. Multi-task learning improved efficiency by reducing computational resources without compromising predictive performance. Integrated gradients interpretability mechanisms identified potentially modifiable risk factors for each complication. Monte Carlo dropout methods provided a quantitative measure of prediction uncertainty that has the potential to enhance clinical trust. Multi-task learning, interpretability mechanisms, and uncertainty metrics demonstrated potential to facilitate effective clinical implementation. 
    more » « less
  4. null (Ed.)
    Abstract Accurate prediction of suicide risk among children and adolescents within an actionable time frame is an important but challenging task. Very few studies have comprehensively considered the clinical risk factors available to produce quantifiable risk scores for estimation of short- and long-term suicide risk for pediatric population. In this paper, we built machine learning models for predicting suicidal behavior among children and adolescents based on their longitudinal clinical records, and determining short- and long-term risk factors. This retrospective study used deidentified structured electronic health records (EHR) from the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center covering the period from 1 October 2011 to 30 September 2016. Clinical records of 41,721 young patients (10–18 years old) were included for analysis. Candidate predictors included demographics, diagnosis, laboratory tests, and medications. Different prediction windows ranging from 0 to 365 days were adopted. For each prediction window, candidate predictors were first screened by univariate statistical tests, and then a predictive model was built via a sequential forward feature selection procedure. We grouped the selected predictors and estimated their contributions to risk prediction at different prediction window lengths. The developed predictive models predicted suicidal behavior across all prediction windows with AUCs varying from 0.81 to 0.86. For all prediction windows, the models detected 53–62% of suicide-positive subjects with 90% specificity. The models performed better with shorter prediction windows and predictor importance varied across prediction windows, illustrating short- and long-term risks. Our findings demonstrated that routinely collected EHRs can be used to create accurate predictive models for suicide risk among children and adolescents. 
    more » « less
  5. null (Ed.)
    Purpose: To develop and evaluate a deep learning (DL) approach to extract rich information from high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Methods: We develop a DL-based model to learn a compact representation of a subject, which is predictive of COPD physiologic severity and other outcomes. Our DL model learned: (a) to extract informative regional image features from HRCT; (b) to adaptively weight these features and form an aggregate patient representation; and finally, (c) to predict several COPD outcomes. The adaptive weights correspond to the regional lung contribution to the disease. We evaluate the model on 10 300 participants from the COPDGene cohort. Results: Our model was strongly predictive of spirometric obstruction ( r2 = 0.67) and grouped 65.4% of subjects correctly and 89.1% within one stage of their GOLD severity stage. Our model achieved an accuracy of 41.7% and 52.8% in stratifying the population-based on centrilobular (5-grade) and paraseptal (3-grade) emphysema severity score, respectively. For predicting future exacerbation, combining subjects' representations from our model with their past exacerbation histories achieved an accuracy of 80.8% (area under the ROC curve of 0.73). For all-cause mortality, in Cox regression analysis, we outperformed the BODE index improving the concordance metric (ours: 0.61 vs BODE: 0.56). Conclusions: Our model independently predicted spirometric obstruction, emphysema severity, exacerbation risk, and mortality from CT imaging alone. This method has potential applicability in both research and clinical practice. 
    more » « less