# Mapping Trajectories of Alzheimer's Progression via Personalized Brain Anchor-nodes

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS ARLINGTON · 2022 · $609,920

## Abstract

Project Summary
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a heterogeneous neurodegenerative disorder, not only in pathophysiology, but also
at different disease progression stages. Despite numerous studies that have investigated the clinical utility of
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based biomarkers in characterizing AD stages from asymptomatic to mildly
symptomatic to dementia, making a personalized precision prediction and early diagnosis of AD is still
challenging. Existing imaging biomarkers are limited in representing significant heterogeneity across different
individuals and at different clinical stages. This challenge originates from the lack of reliable brain landmarks that
can simultaneously characterize and represent robust population correspondences and individual variation
during normal aging and AD progression. In response, this project aims to: 1) Identify a set of brain anchor-
nodes as population landmarks based on both group-wise consistent patterns and individualized anatomical and
connectivity properties during normal aging and AD progression among massive, publicly available neuroimaging
data sources; 2) Develop an efficient individualized shape transformation approach based on deep learning to
map population anchor-nodes to individual brains by flexibly leveraging multimodal individual features; and 3)
Construct a progression tree using anchor-nodes derived brain measures to unveil and represent the wide
spectrum of AD development. Individual subjects can thus be projected to the tree structure to effectively and
conveniently access their clinical status and predict the trend of AD progression. We will test our new frameworks
on four large independent aging/AD cohorts including HCP-Aging, UK Biobank, ADNI and the latest stage of
Open Access Series of Imaging Studies (OASIS-3), and freely release our computational tools and processed
data to the public.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10346720
- **Project number:** 1R01AG075582-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS ARLINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Gang Li
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $609,920
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-02-15 → 2027-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10346720

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10346720, Mapping Trajectories of Alzheimer's Progression via Personalized Brain Anchor-nodes (1R01AG075582-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10346720. Licensed CC0.

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