A Generative Modeling Approach for Interpreting Population-Level Variability in Brain Structure

Ran Liu, Cem Subakan, Aishwarya H. Balwani, Jennifer Whitesell, Julie Harris, Sanmi Koyejo, Eva L. Dyer

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Understanding how neural structure varies across individuals is critical for characterizing the effects of disease, learning, and aging on the brain. However, disentangling the different factors that give rise to individual variability is still an outstanding challenge. In this paper, we introduce a deep generative modeling approach to find different modes of variation across many individuals. Our approach starts with training a variational autoencoder on a collection of auto-fluorescence images from a little over 1,700 mouse brains at 25 μ m resolution. We then tap into the learned factors and validate the model’s expressiveness, via a novel bi-directional technique that makes structured perturbations to both, the high-dimensional inputs of the network, as well as the low-dimensional latent variables in its bottleneck. Our results demonstrate that through coupling generative modeling frameworks with structured perturbations, it is possible to probe the latent space of the generative model to provide insights into the representations of brain structure formed in deep networks.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationMedical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2020 - 23rd International Conference, Proceedings
EditorsAnne L. Martel, Purang Abolmaesumi, Danail Stoyanov, Diana Mateus, Maria A. Zuluaga, S. Kevin Zhou, Daniel Racoceanu, Leo Joskowicz
PublisherSpringer
Pages257-266
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9783030597214
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020
Event23rd International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2020 - Lima, Peru
Duration: Oct 4 2020Oct 8 2020

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume12265 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference23rd International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2020
Country/TerritoryPeru
CityLima
Period10/4/2010/8/20

Keywords

  • Brain architecture and neuroanatomy
  • Interpretable deep learning
  • Variational autoencoder

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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