Simultaneous Cluster Structure Learning and Estimation of Heterogeneous Graphs for Matrix-variate fMRI Data

TL;DR

This paper introduces SCEHG, a novel method for simultaneous clustering and estimation of heterogeneous brain connectivity graphs from matrix-variate fMRI data, leveraging group differences in conditional dependencies.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new approach that transforms unsupervised clustering into supervised penalized regression based on conditional dependence differences, with an efficient ADMM algorithm.

Findings

SCEHG outperforms existing methods in simulation studies.

The method effectively identifies brain connectivity patterns in ADHD fMRI data.

An R package implementation is provided for practical use.

Abstract

Graphical models play an important role in neuroscience studies, particularly in brain connectivity analysis. Typically, observations/samples are from several heterogenous groups and the group membership of each observation/sample is unavailable, which poses a great challenge for graph structure learning. In this article, we propose a method which can achieve Simultaneous Clustering and Estimation of Heterogeneous Graphs (briefly denoted as SCEHG) for matrix-variate function Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data. Unlike the conventional clustering methods which rely on the mean differences of various groups, the proposed SCEHG method fully exploits the group differences of conditional dependence relationships among brain regions for learning cluster structure. In essence, by constructing individual-level between-region network measures, we formulate clustering as penalized regression with grouping and sparsity pursuit, which transforms the unsupervised learning into supervised learning. An ADMM algorithm is proposed to solve the corresponding optimization problem. We also propose a generalized criterion to specify the number of clusters. Extensive simulation studies illustrate the superiority of the SCEHG method over some state-of-the-art methods in terms of both clustering and graph recovery accuracy. We also apply the SCEHG procedure to analyze fMRI data associated with ADHD (abbreviated for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), which illustrate its empirical usefulness. An R package ``SCEHG" to implement the method is available at https://github.com/heyongstat/SCEHG.