Characterizing and Predicting Autism Spectrum Disorder by Performing Resting-State Functional Network Community Pattern Analysis

Growing evidence indicates that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuropsychological disconnection syndrome that can be analyzed using various complex network metrics used as pathology biomarkers. Recently, community detection and analysis rooted in the complex network and graph theories have been introduced to investigate the changes in resting-state functional network community structure under neurological pathologies. However, the potential of hidden patterns in the modular organization of networks derived from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to predict brain pathology has never been investigated. In this study, we present a novel analysis technique to identify alterations in community patterns in functional networks under ASD. In addition, we design machine learning classifiers to predict the clinical class of patients with ASD and controls by using only community pattern quality metrics as features. Analyses conducted on six publicly available datasets from 235 subjects, including patients with ASD and age-matched controls revealed that the modular structure is significantly disturbed in patients with ASD. Machine learning algorithms showed that the predictive power of our five metrics is relatively high (similar to 85.16% peak accuracy for in-site data and similar to 75.00% peak accuracy for multisite data). These results lend further credence to the dysconnectivity theory of this pathology.