Identifying multiple sclerosis subtypes using unsupervised machine learning and MRI data
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Multiple sclerosis (MS) is subdivided into four phenotypes on the basis of medical history and clinical symptoms. These phenotypes are defined retrospectively and lack clear pathobiological underpinning. Since Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) better reflects disease pathology than clinical symptoms, we aimed to explore MRI-driven subtypes of MS based on pathological changes visible on MRI using unsupervised machine learning. In separate train and external validation sets we looked at a total of 21,170 patient-years of data from 15 randomised controlled trials and three observational cohorts to explore MRI-driven subtypes and test whether these subtypes had differential clinical outcomes. We processed MRI data to obtain measures of brain volumes, lesion volumes, and normal appearing white matter T1/T2. We identified three MRI-driven subtypes who were similar in how they accumulated MRI abnormality. Based on the earliest abnormalities suggested by our model they were called: cortex-led, normal appearing white matter-led, and lesion-led subtypes. In the external validation datasets, the lesion-led subtype showed a faster disability progression and higher disease activity than the cortex-led subtype. In all datasets, MRI-driven subtypes were associated with disability progression ( β Subtype= 0.04, p=0.02; β Stage= -0.06, p<0.001), whilst clinical phenotypes and baseline disability were not. Only the lesion-led subtype showed a significant treatment response in three progressive multiple sclerosis randomised controlled trials (−66%, p=0.009) and in three relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis trials (−89%, p=0.04). Our results show that MRI-driven subtyping using machine learning can prospectively enrich clinical trials with patients who are most likely to respond to treatments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".