GM-VGG-Net: A Gray Matter-Based Deep Learning Network for Autism Classification

<b>Background:</b> Around 1 in 59 individuals is diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), according to CDS statistics. Conventionally, ASD has been diagnosed using functional brain regions, regions of interest, or multi-tissue-based training in artificial intelligence models. The objective of the exhibit study is to develop an efficient deep learning network for identifying ASD using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based brain scans. <b>Methods:</b> In this work, we developed a VGG-based deep learning network capable of diagnosing autism using whole brain gray matter (GM) tissues. We trained our deep network with 132 MRI T1 images from normal controls and 140 MRI T1 images from ASD patients sourced from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE) dataset. <b>Results:</b> The number of participants in both ASD and normal control (CN) subject groups was not statistically different (<i>p</i> = 0.23). The mean age of the CN subject group was 14.62 years (standard deviation: 4.34), and the ASD group had mean age of 14.89 years (standard deviation: 4.29). Our deep learning model accomplished a training accuracy of 97% and a validation accuracy of 96% over 50 epochs without overfitting. <b>Conclusions:</b> To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to use GM tissue alone for diagnosing ASD using VGG-Net.