Prediction of brain age using structural magnetic resonance imaging: A comparison of accuracy and test–retest reliability of publicly available software packages

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Brain age prediction algorithms using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) aim to assess the biological age of the human brain. The difference between a person's chronological age and the estimated brain age is thought to reflect deviations from a normal aging trajectory, indicating a slower or accelerated biological aging process. Several pre-trained software packages for predicting brain age are publicly available. In this study, we perform a comparison of such packages with respect to (1) predictive accuracy, (2) test–retest reliability, and (3) the ability to track age progression over time. We evaluated the six brain age prediction packages: brainageR, DeepBrainNet, brainage, ENIGMA, pyment, and mccqrnn. The accuracy and test–retest reliability were assessed on MRI data from 372 healthy people aged between 18.4 and 86.2 years (mean 38.7 ± 17.5 years). All packages showed significant correlations between predicted brain age and chronological age (r = 0.66–0.97, p < 0.001), with pyment displaying the strongest correlation. The mean absolute error was between 3.56 (pyment) and 9.54 years (ENIGMA). brainageR, pyment, and mccqrnn were superior in terms of reliability (ICC values between 0.94–0.98), as well as predicting age progression over a longer time span. Of the six packages, pyment and brainageR consistently showed the highest accuracy and test–retest reliability.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftHuman Brain Mapping
Vol/bind44
Udgave nummer17
Sider (fra-til)6139-6148
ISSN1065-9471
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2023

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by a Longevity Impetus Grant from the Norm Group and The Lundbeck Foundation project BrainDrugs (grant R279‐2018‐1145). Jonas E. Svensson was supported by Region H (grant A7167). Pontus Plavén‐Sigray was supported by the Swedish Research Council (grant 2021‐00462). We would like to thank Mark Uhrskov Juul, whose master thesis (Juul, 2017 ) inspired this study.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

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