Brain entropy as a biomarker of major depression in adolescents and young adults: insights from multimodal resting-state functional magentic resonance imaging.
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The authors' code
MATLAB · 42 lines · 1.7 KB · GPL-2.0
- % Toolbox for batch processing ASL perfusion based fMRI data.
- % All rights reserved.
- % Ze Wang @ TRC, CFN, Upenn 2004
- par;
- % get the subdirectories in the main directory
- for sb = 1:length(PAR.subjects) % for each subject
- sprintf('uBEN calc. subject %u .........',sb)
- %go get the sessions
- for ses=1:PAR.nsess(sb)
- %now get all images to smooth!
- %prepare directory
- %P=[];
- for c=1:PAR.ncond
- if isempty(PAR.condirs{sb,ses,c}) continue; end
- P=[];
- % Ptmp=spm_select('FPList', PAR.condirs{sb,ses,c}, ['^r' PAR.subjects{sb} '.*' PAR.confilters{c} '.*\.img$']);
- P=spm_select('FPList', PAR.condirs{sb,ses,c}, ['^sflt.*\.nii$']);
- if isempty(P)
- fprintf('!!!!!! No images found for %s session %d and condition %d\n',PAR.subjects{sb},ses,c);
- continue;
- end
- v=spm_vol(P);
- if size(v,1)<120, continue; end
- cd(PAR.condirs{sb,ses,c})
- pmask=spm_select('FPList',PAR.condirs{sb,ses,c},['^brainmask\.nii$']);
- oimg=fullfile(PAR.condirs{sb,ses,c}, ['uBEN' PAR.subjects{sb} '.nii']);
- % str=['!' PAR.benexe ' -d ' num2str(PAR.dim) ' -r ' num2str(PAR.r) ...
- % '-ndummies 2 -tlen_2use 136 -otype 2 -s 1 -c 30 -i ' P ' -m ' pmask ' -o ' oimg];
- str=['!' PAR.benexe ' -d ' num2str(PAR.dim) ' -r ' num2str(PAR.r) ...
- ' -num_dummies 4 -c 30 -i ' P ' -m ' pmask ' -o ' oimg];
- if isunix
- eval(str);
- else
- system(str);
- end
- end
- end
- end
batch_calc_uBEN.m at commit f396951, under GPL-2.0 · at the source
Overview
- T he First School of Clinical Medicine, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510400, China
- Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA
- Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510400, China
- State Key Laboratory of Traditional Chinese Medicine Syndrome, Guangzhou 510006, China
- Cerebropathy Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510400, China
- Cerebropathy Center, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou 510150, China
- Department of Radiology, Foshan first People’s Hospital, Foshan 528000, China
Abstract
Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) in adolescents and young adults is increasingly prevalent, yet accurate diagnosis remains challenging due to the limitations of conventional neuroimaging metrics. Traditional resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) measures such as amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF), regional homogeneity (ReHo), and functional connectivity density (FCD) primarily capture static aspects of brain activity and may overlook critical neural dynamics. Brain entropy (BEN), which quantifies temporal irregularity in rs-fMRI signals, may offer a complementary approach to better characterize neural alterations in MDD.
Methods: We analyzed multimodal rs-fMRI data from 204 individuals aged 12–24 years (119 with MDD and 85 healthy controls). BEN was computed alongside ALFF, ReHo, and FCD to extract region-wise features across the brain. A support vector machine with recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE) was used to classify MDD and healthy controls based on various feature combinations. Classification performance was evaluated using repeated cross-validation and permutation testing. Additionally, partial Spearman correlations were performed between selected brain features and clinical measures including depression severity, childhood trauma, sleep quality, and cognitive control.
Results: Models incorporating BEN consistently outperformed those using traditional rs-fMRI features alone. The combination of BEN, ALFF, and FCD achieved the highest classification accuracy (AUC = 0.877, permutation test P < 0.001). The most frequently selected brain regions contributing to MDD classification included the putamen, paracentral lobule, cuneus, middle frontal gyrus, and rectus. BEN features also showed preliminary correlations with clinical variables such as childhood trauma and sleep quality, suggesting functional relevance.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates that BEN provides complementary diagnostic information to traditional rs-fMRI features in classifying adolescent and young adult MDD. BEN-related alterations in brain activity may reflect underlying neurobiological disruptions and show potential as a functional neuroimaging biomarker for depression during a critical stage of brain development.
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY-NC), from the paper cited above.
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Its files are read in the Code ↔ Paper reader above.
zewangnew/BENtbx
f39695187951f59ce2db85db876b0582c6180c1b, 31 January 2023Availability: 1 check, the latest on 30 September 2026: the link answers
- 30 September 2026: the link answers
4 files
- batch_calc_uBEN.m, MATLAB, 42 lines
- LICENSE, License, 339 lines
- README.md, Text, 73 lines
- readme.txt, Text, 61 lines
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Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, pages, dates, 14 authors, 6 keywords, 60 references, 1 integrity notice.
Cite
This paper
Lu, R., Li, J., Li, Y., Zeng, X., Guo, Y., Li, D., Cui, Y., Liang, X., Zhang, H., Wang, J., Cheng, B., Liu, Y., Wang, Z., & Qiu, S. (2026). Brain entropy as a biomarker of major depression in adolescents and young adults: insights from multimodal resting-state functional magentic resonance imaging. Psychoradiology, 6, kkag009. https://
BibTeX
@article{lu2026brain,
author = {Lu, Ruoxi and Li, Jianyu and Li, Yiran and Zeng, Xinglin and Guo, Yan and Li, Danian and Cui, Ying and Liang, Xinyu and Zhang, Hanyue and Wang, Jing and Cheng, Baohua and Liu, Yujie and Wang, Ze and Qiu, Shijun},
title = {{Brain entropy as a biomarker of major depression in adolescents and young adults: insights from multimodal resting-state functional magentic resonance imaging}},
journal = {Psychoradiology},
year = {2026},
month = mar,
volume = {6},
pages = {kkag009},
publisher = {Oxford University Press},
issn = {2634-4416},
doi = {10.1093/
url = {https://
pmid = {42017053},
pmcid = {PMC13092983}
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
AU - Lu, Ruoxi
AU - Li, Jianyu
AU - Li, Yiran
AU - Zeng, Xinglin
AU - Guo, Yan
AU - Li, Danian
AU - Cui, Ying
AU - Liang, Xinyu
AU - Zhang, Hanyue
AU - Wang, Jing
AU - Cheng, Baohua
AU - Liu, Yujie
AU - Wang, Ze
AU - Qiu, Shijun
TI - Brain entropy as a biomarker of major depression in adolescents and young adults: insights from multimodal resting-state functional magentic resonance imaging
T2 - Psychoradiology
J2 - Psychoradiology
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/
VL - 6
SP - kkag009
SN - 2634-4416
PB - Oxford University Press
DO - 10.1093/
UR - https://
LA - en
ER -
CSL-JSON
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