Prognostic Survival Analysis for AD Diagnosis and Progression Using MRI Data: An AI-Based Approach

Alzheimer’s Disease is a progressive neuro-degenerative disorder and a leading cause of dementia, marked by cognitive decline, memory loss, and behavioral changes. Despite advancements in medical imaging and Artificial Intelligence (AI), early detection and accurate prognostic modeling remain challenging, particularly in distinguishing overlapping disease stages. This study proposes a novel AI framework combining EfficientNetB0, a state-of-the-art deep learning model, with dual attention mechanisms for robust feature extraction and survival analysis using the Alzheimer’s MRI dataset hosted on the Kaggle platform. The model was trained and evaluated on a balanced dataset of 6,400 MRI images, classified into 4 AD stages: Non-Demented (NoD), very Mild-Demented (vMiD), Mild-Demented (MiD), and Moderate-Demented (MoD). The pre-processing steps, including resizing, normalization, and data augmentation, ensured robustness and generalizability. The framework achieved classification accuracies of 99. 93% (training), 93. 60% (validation) and 93. 59% (testing), with a perfect Concordance Index of 1.0 for survival predictions, demonstrating its ability to accurately rank survival times. By integrating survival analysis with deep learning, the framework addresses limitations in previous work, such as reliance on linear assumptions and limited classification capabilities, and provides actionable insights for clinical workflows, supporting personalized treatment and early intervention strategies. Future work will focus on integrating longitudinal data, exploring time-dependent co-variates, and enhancing explainability to promote adoption in diverse clinical settings. This approach represents a significant advancement in AI-driven diagnosis and progression modeling of AD, with the potential to transform patient care and outcomes.