How Efficient are the CDR, MMSE, nWBV, and eTIV Values when Diagnosing a Patient with Dementia?

Project by Polygence alum Sindhu

How Efficient are the CDR, MMSE, nWBV, and eTIV Values when Diagnosing a Patient with Dementia?

Project's result

I published my research paper on a peer-reviewed journal called the Curieux Academic Journal. This experience then helped me secure a research position at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience.

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Summary

This research will help predict if a patient has dementia or not based on individual variables in a given dataset. Using the MRI and Alzheimer's dataset, which shows 373 patients who were tested for dementia and their associated test scores, I programmed 4 logistic regression machine learning models and confusion matrices to distinguish whether a patient has dementia based on one individual value in the dataset. I also evaluated if there was a correlation between the features in the dataset and between each individual feature and the diagnosis of the patient to help understand the beneficence of each variable in the dataset. This research will help clinical doctors reduce the amount of time that they spend diagnosing an individual with dementia and will help prove if the values that they use are helpful in the diagnosis of dementia patients. My research looked at 4 variables that clinical doctors use; the CDR, MMSE, eTIV, and nWBV scores. My results showed that the nWBV and eTIV scores were unreliable when predicting if a patient would have dementia or not. The MMSE scores were slightly more beneficial but still had a rather mediocre prediction accuracy. The CDR score, on the other hand, was accurately able to predict whether a patient was demented or not 100% of the time. In conclusion, the CDR value should be put in high consideration when diagnosing a patient and the MMSE can be used as a preliminary method for clinical doctors for them to develop a brief idea regarding a patient's status.

Matthew

Matthew

Polygence mentor

PhD Doctor of Philosophy

Subjects

Neuroscience, Quantitative

Expertise

Neuroscience, data science

Sindhu

Sindhu

Student

School

Folsom Middle School to Vista Del Lago High School

Graduation Year

2025

Project review

“I had a great time and learned a lot from this experience! From gathering information from research papers to identifying a starting point for my project to creating a cohesive research paper and publishing it, I truly feel that I have gained valuable skills in research methodology, critical analysis, and academic writing that have already benefited me in my coming endeavors.”

About my mentor

“My mentor helped me a lot by not only pushing me to expand the breadth of my project but also by guiding me through the challenges I faced, especially with the code I wrote. I am very grateful for the guidance my mentor Matthew provided me!”