16 THE NEURODEGENERATIVE MECHANISM AND BRAIN ATROPHY CENTER IDENTIFICATION METHOD OF ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT PERSONNEL BASED ON R2SN
Authors: Zhang* Ye , Ren Rujuan , Niu Weijing 
Published: February 2025

Background

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease with insidious onset and unknown pathological progression. At present, this disease has gradually become younger, and research on AD has invested a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources both domestically and internationally. Among them, the Regional Radiomics Similarity Networks (R2SN) based on regional radiomics similarity has been proven to be suitable for diagnosing neurological disorders. The study aims to explore the effective identification of the initial atrophy center of brain structural atrophy abnormalities by R2SN and investigate its neurodegenerative mechanism.

Methods

The study selected 100 AD patients aged between 40-65 who were admitted to a certain hospital and had been engaged in economic management related work for a long time. The study conducted standardized magnetic resonance imaging scans on all participants, used T1 weighted images for brain structure calibration, and calculated the similarity of various brain regions through R2SN analysis. During the experiment, it is assumed that R2SN can capture the accelerated phase of brain structural atrophy. A new Core Peripheral Atrophy Model (CPAM) was designed based on the atrophy results of brain regions in the experiment. In this model, the first 40 brain regions of the atrophy sequence were used as a atrophy center (Core), and the adjacent last 40 brain regions were used as the peripheral areas of the atrophy center that had not yet atrophied. A total of 8 CPAM models were constructed. Perform a two-sample t-test on the Core and Peripheral values of each CPAM model to calculate the model CPAM score, with a significance level of P&lt;0.5.

Results

After conducting a search and judgment of 236 brain regions based on the CPAM model, it was found that the CPAM models of the left basal ganglia and right amygdala were significant, thus determining the respective structural atrophy centers of the left and right brains. The study continued to conduct correlation analysis between the experimental results of the atrophy center and the difference in gray matter volume of AD brain. Both the left basal ganglia and the right amygdala showed significant correlations (P&lt;0.001). Further correlation analysis was conducted on various brain regions of the cerebral cortex, and the results showed that the superior temporal gyrus of the brain ranked highest among all results. This brain region is located in the upper part of the coverage of the atrophy center, and there is a physical distance correlation between the three.

Discussion

The results showed that in the group of economic managers, the application of R2SN successfully captured the spreading pattern of shrinking centers. This discovery is highly consistent with the classic gray matter volume change pattern of AD, providing important clues for identifying early neurodegenerative changes in the disease. R2SN can effectively identify the atrophy centers of brain structures, providing theoretical support for early diagnosis and intervention strategies of AD. Further research can explore the combination of R2SN with other imaging indicators to improve the accuracy of the model.