Visualization provides unique direct information about the structural aging of the brain that cannot be obtained from blood parameters and other molecular biomarkers. For example, the main signs of aging include the thickness of the cerebral cortex, which controls speech and thinking, and the volume of gray matter. By assessing these and other characteristics, scientists decided to create a tool for detecting the rate of brain aging using MRI. The results are published in Nature.
To train the algorithm, the scientists used data from more than a thousand people in New Zealand born between 1972 and 1973. The AI looked for correlations between brain scan results and important indicators of the body's condition - cardiovascular, metabolic, immune function and other criteria.
The result was a new “aging clock” that proved informative when tested on a sample of nearly 45,000 scans. For example, accelerated rates of brain aging at age 72 were associated with the highest risks of developing dementia over the next 16 years.
While the authors are still refining the algorithm, they see great potential for the new AI for clinical use. In the future, a simple MRI of the brain could become an important screening tool for the elderly and people at high risk of dementia.
Previously, other scientists successfully used MRI to assess the risk of developing heart failure. Thus, a change in one indicator increased the risk of the disease fivefold.
