Interpretable Deep Learning for the Remote Characterisation of Ambulation in Multiple Sclerosis using Smartphones

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that deep learning models applied to smartphone sensor data can effectively distinguish between healthy individuals and those with multiple sclerosis, providing interpretable insights into gait patterns for remote disability assessment.

Contribution

The paper introduces a transfer learning framework for deep CNNs on smartphone data and visualizes model decisions using Layer-Wise Relevance Propagation for interpretability.

Findings

Deep CNNs outperform SVMs in classifying MS ambulation.

Transfer learning improves model performance with limited data.

Relevance heatmaps reveal gait features distinguishing MS from healthy controls.

Abstract

The emergence of digital technologies such as smartphones in healthcare applications have demonstrated the possibility of developing rich, continuous, and objective measures of multiple sclerosis (MS) disability that can be administered remotely and out-of-clinic. In this work, deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) applied to smartphone inertial sensor data were shown to better distinguish healthy from MS participant ambulation, compared to standard Support Vector Machine (SVM) feature-based methodologies. To overcome the typical limitations associated with remotely generated health data, such as low subject numbers, sparsity, and heterogeneous data, a transfer learning (TL) model from similar large open-source datasets was proposed. Our TL framework utilised the ambulatory information learned on Human Activity Recognition (HAR) tasks collected from similar smartphone-based sensor data. A lack of transparency of "black-box" deep networks remains one of the largest stumbling blocks to the wider acceptance of deep learning for clinical applications. Ensuing work therefore aimed to visualise DCNN decisions attributed by relevance heatmaps using Layer-Wise Relevance Propagation (LRP). Through the LRP framework, the patterns captured from smartphone-based inertial sensor data that were reflective of those who are healthy versus persons with MS (PwMS) could begin to be established and understood. Interpretations suggested that cadence-based measures, gait speed, and ambulation-related signal perturbations were distinct characteristics that distinguished MS disability from healthy participants. Robust and interpretable outcomes, generated from high-frequency out-of-clinic assessments, could greatly augment the current in-clinic assessment picture for PwMS, to inform better disease management techniques, and enable the development of better therapeutic interventions.