Testing Graph Robustness Indexes for EEG Analysis in Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnosis

Abstract

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is an incurable neurodegenerative disorder which mainly affects older adults. An early diagnosis is essential because medical treatments can slow down the progression of the disease only if provided during the first stage, called Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Starting from the study of electroencephalografic signals, brain functional connectivity analyses can be performed with the support of the graph theory. In particular, the purpose of this work is to verify the performances of three indexes, typically adopted to evaluate the graph robustness, in order to estimate the functional connectivity for three groups of subjects: healthy controls and people affected by dementia at two different stages (MCI and AD). The results obtained by the Connection Density Index, the Randić Index, and a normalized version of the Kirchhoff Index revealed a higher robustness in the brain networks of healthy people, followed by MCI and, finally, by AD patients, consistent with the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. The statistical analysis showed that there is a significant difference between controls and AD for all three indexes. Finally, all three indexes were compared, revealing that the the Randić Index outperformed the other two indexes. These preliminary outcomes will be exploited to address further in-depth and time-expensive analyses for improving the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.