Consciousness level and recovery outcome prediction using high-order brain functional connectivity network

Based on the neuroimaging data from a large set of acquired brain injury patients, we investigate the feasibility of using machine learning for automatic prediction of individual consciousness level. Rather than using the traditional Pearson’s correlation-based brain functional network, which measures only the simple temporal synchronization of the BOLD signals from each pair of brain regions, we construct a high-order brain functional network that is capable of characterizing topographical information-based high-level functional associations among brain regions. In such a high-order brain network, each node represents the community of a brain region, described by a set of this region’s low-order functional associations with other brain regions, and each edge characterizes topographical similarity between a pair of such communities. Experimental results show that the high-order brain functional network enables a significant better classification for consciousness level and recovery outcome prediction.