Applications of Normative Modeling: A Shift Method for Site-Independent Normative Modeling and Brain Age Prediction

Motivation: Normative modeling of thalamic nuclei is an up-and-coming area of research. The motivation behind this study is to find the possible applications of normative modeling. Goal(s): The aim of this work is to be able to incorporate new cohorts of data into normative models as well as modeling brain age using volumes of thalamic nuclei. Approach: The design involves comparing existing data to new methodology to evaluate the accuracy of the methods. Results: The method to allow incorporating new data proved to effectively emulate models trained on existing data. The brain age modeling proved proficient in the prediction of brain age from data. Impact: The ability to incorporate new datasets from external sites allows new research to better understand the effects disease have on the brain. Brain age prediction also allows new research to dive into the association between disease and brain age.