Unveiling Autism: Machine Learning-based Autism Spectrum Disorder Detection through MRI Analysis

The prediction of autism features in relation to age groups has not been definitively addressed, despite the fact that several studies have been conducted using various methodologies. Research in the field of neuroscience has demonstrated that intracranial brain volume and the corpus callosum provide crucial information for the identification of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Based on these findings, we present Decision Tree-based Autism Prediction System (DT-APS) and Random Forest-based Autism Prediction System (RF-APS) for automatic ASD identification in this paper. These systems utilize characteristics extracted from the corpus callosum and intracranial brain volume, and are based on machine learning techniques. By prioritizing characteristics with the highest discriminatory power for ASD classification, our proposed approaches, DT-APS and RF-APS, have not only enhanced identification accuracy but also simplified the training of machine learning models. The initial step of this method involves dividing each MRI scan into distinct anatomical areas. These areas are adjacent slices in a single 2D image. Each 2D image is mapped to the curvelet space, and the set of GGD parameters characterizes each of the distinct curvelet sub-bands. The AQ-10 dataset was utilized to evaluate the proposed model. When tested on both types of datasets, the suggested prediction model demonstrated superior performance compared to alternative approaches in all relevant metrics, including accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, precision, and false positive rate (FPR).