Machine Learning-Driven Approach to Identify Freezing of Gait in Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease Using Conventional Structural MRI and Clinical Measures

Our results demonstrate that FreeSurfer-derived cortical area measures from 27 key regions across the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes can moderately predict FOG in PD (AUC = 0.71) using a linear SVM model. While preliminary, our work outlines an MRI-based analytical approach that may inform future external validation efforts and contribute to understanding the potential role of cortical morphology in PD-FOG risk. However, given the limited sample size and constrained independent testing cohort, these findings should be interpreted as exploratory and warrant replication in larger, multi-center studies.