Performance Evaluation of CNN Models for Alzheimer’s Disease Detection with MRI Scans

Abstract

The primary symptom of Alzheimer's disease is memory impairment, which is a neurodegenerative condition. The manifestation of these symptoms can be attributed to the impairment of the cerebral nerve responsible for cognitive functions such as learning, thinking and memory. Alzheimer’s disease is a prominent cause of mortality and lacks a definitive curve. However, appropriate medicinal interventions have demonstrated the potential to mitigate the progression and severity of the condition. This study presents the comparison of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models, namely ResNet50, VGG19 and VGG16 architectures, as an approach to construct an automated classification system for Alzheimer’s disease in future. The study utilises Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) datasets to identify MRI datasets of individual with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Cognitively normal (CN), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), early mild cognitive impairment (EMCI), and late mild cognitive impairment (LMCI). In the conducted experiment, the study achieved accuracy rates of 91.18% and 94.56% while utilising an epoch size of 2. The accuracy results indicate that the VGG16 model outperforms the ResNet50 model. The utilisation of automated Alzheimer’s disease classification holds potential as an auxiliary tool for healthcare professionals in determining the stage of Alzheimer’s disease hence facilitating the administration of suitable medicinal interventions.