Leveraging nonlinear dynamic models to predict progression of neuroimaging biomarkers

Using biomarkers to model disease course effectively and make early prediction is a challenging but critical path to improving diagnostic accuracy and designing preventive trials for neurological disorders. Leveraging the domain knowledge that certain neuroimaging biomarkers may reflect the disease pathology, we propose a model inspired by the neural mass model from cognitive neuroscience to jointly model nonlinear dynamic trajectories of the biomarkers. Under a nonlinear mixed‐effects model framework, we introduce subject‐ and biomarker‐specific random inflection points to characterize the critical time of underlying disease progression as reflected in the biomarkers. A latent liability score is shared across biomarkers to pool information. Our model allows assessing how the underlying disease progression will affect the trajectories of the biomarkers, and, thus, is potentially useful for individual disease management or preventive therapeutics. We propose an EM algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation, where in the E step, a normal approximation is used to facilitate numerical integration. We perform extensive simulation studies and apply the method to analyze data from a large multisite natural history study of Huntington's Disease (HD). The results show that some neuroimaging biomarker inflection points are early signs of the HD onset. Finally, we develop an online tool to provide the individual prediction of the biomarker trajectories given the medical history and baseline measurements.